Dems struggle for final votes on health-care bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid intense lobbying by the Obama administration, House Democratic leaders struggled Friday for the final votes needed to pass sweeping health-care legislation, offering fresh concessions to abortion opponents and working to ease concerns among Hispanic holdouts.

“We’re very close” to having enough votes to prevail, said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, although he added a vote scheduled for today could slip by a day or two and sought to pin the blame on possible Republican delaying tactics.

“Nice try, Rep. Hoyer, but you can’t blame Republicans when the fact is you just don’t have the votes,” shot back Antonia Ferrier, spokeswoman for the GOP leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.

Hours later, Democrats were still trying to get them.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi presided over meetings well after dark with Democratic abortion foes, whose votes were critical to the bill’s fate, then with supporters of abortion rights, who are among the health legislation’s biggest advocates in the House.

It was not clear precisely what concessions were under discussion. In general, the issue in dispute was the availability of abortion services in insurance policies to be sold in a proposed new federally run insurance exchange, and also in a new government- coverage option included in the bill.

In a struggle that combined the fate of President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority and a 2010 campaign issue, bipartisanship was not an option.

GOP leaders boasted that all 177 House Republicans stood ready to oppose the $1.2 trillion bill, which would create a new federally supervised insurance marketplace where the uninsured could purchase coverage.

Consumers would have the option of picking a government-run plan, the most hotly contested item in the legislation and the basis for the Republican claim that Democrats were planning a government takeover of the insurance industry.

Democrats said their bill was designed to spread coverage to millions who lack it, ban insurance- industry practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and restrain the growth of health-care spending nationally. The Congressional Budget Office said that if enacted, the measure would extend coverage to 96 percent of all eligible Americans within 10 years.

Obama arranged to visit the Capitol complex today to make one final pitch to fellow Democrats for the measure. He and others in his administration spent part of Friday lobbying intensely for its passage.

Rep. Jason Altmire, a second-term Democrat from western Pennsylvania, said he received calls during the day from the president, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Their message was “this is a historic moment. You don’t want to end up with nothing,” he said.

Altmire added his callers emphasized the legislation would change once it left the House, “but if you kill it now, it’s over” for the foreseeable future. He said he remained undecided on his vote.

Several Democrats have already announced their opposition, most of them moderate to conservative members of the so-called Blue Dog Coalition.