Thursday, September 24, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sweeping health-care legislation cleared its first hurdles in the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday as Democrats turned back a series of proposed changes by Republicans who attacked it as a threat to Medicare.
Yet even as they prevailed on politically charged votes, majority Democrats also tacitly conceded one point — that despite a pledge by President Barack Obama, some seniors who receive coverage from private insurers could lose some of the optional benefits they enjoy.
In a long day of maneuvering, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine sometimes sided with fellow Republicans on the panel and occasionally voted with Democrats who hope she ultimately will become the first GOP member of Congress to back legislation along the lines that Obama wants.
The maneuvering came as Democrats cheered a vote in the Massachusetts Legislature that will allow the appointment of a replacement for the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy — giving them 60 votes in the Senate. That’s the number needed to overcome any Republican filibuster when health-care legislation reaches the Senate floor.
The early skirmishes in the panel also coincided with attempts by the Obama administration to reassure seniors about the legislation. Older Americans are more likely to vote than younger men and women, and public polling shows many harbor significant skepticism about attempts to redo the health-care system.
“Nobody is going to mess with your benefits. Nobody. All we do is make it better for people on Medicare,” Vice President Joe Biden told about 150 people at the Leisure World retirement community in suburban Maryland.
The Finance Committee is the last of five congressional panels to debate health-care legislation that is atop Obama’s domestic agenda. Though the bill omits several provisions backed by liberals, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the committee chairman, hopes to hold support from all Democrats on the panel and perhaps pick up Snowe’s vote as well.
At its core, the bill is designed to expand coverage to millions who lack it, employing a new system of federal subsidies for lower-income individuals and families and establishing an insurance exchange in which coverage would have federally guaranteed benefits. Insurance companies would be banned from refusing to sell insurance based on an individual’s health history, and limits would be imposed on higher premiums based on age.
At the same time, Baucus — in keeping with Obama’s wishes — drafted legislation that would reduce the skyrocketing rate of medical spending overall. The bill’s price tag is less than $900 billion over a decade.
Republicans criticized several cost-cutting provisions, in particular an estimated $500 billion that would be cut from projected Medicare payments over a decade.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said it was “disingenuous to say Congress can cut this much ... without having an adverse effect on seniors’ access to care.”
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the bill is “paid for by cutting — maybe a better word is slashing — Medicare by $500 billion.”
But some Democrats noted that other portions of the bill would increase benefits for all beneficiaries on Medicare, sweetening prescription-drug benefits, for example, and Baucus said the net result of the legislation would be added years of solvency for the program’s troubled trust fund.
Baucus effectively sidetracked the amendments by Kyl and Roberts by noting they failed to replace the lost savings, but a proposal by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was a different challenge.
The Utah Republican sought to clarify that the legislation would not result in the loss of any Medicare benefits under a provision to cut subsidies to private plans by $123 billion over a decade. His attempt failed, 14-9, and Snowe sided with the Democrats.
In its place, Baucus won approval for an alternative that said no cut in legally guaranteed Medicare benefits could result, a tacit admission that additional benefits that go to seniors in some private plans could be reduced.