Dems unveil revamped bill

March 19, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON

Democrats on Thursday unveiled a revamped health-care overhaul plan aimed at reducing insurance costs, providing more Medicare drug benefits and reducing federal deficits by $138 billion over the next 10 years.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the measure Sunday, although Democratic leaders still appeared to be short of the 216 votes needed for passage. Democrats control 253 House seats.

President Barack Obama again delayed his trip to Asia. He’d postponed his departure to Sunday, but White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama would stay in Washington because health care was of “paramount” importance. The president originally was supposed to leave Thursday. Now the White House says he’ll visit Indonesia and Australia in June.

As lobbying intensified, House Democratic leaders rolled out a series of changes to the legislation that both houses of Congress passed last year.

Democrats got a boost Thursday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which reported that federal budget deficits should drop by $138 billion over 10 years and $1.2 trillion in the following decade if the bill becomes law.

The preliminary CBO analysis had been stalled for nearly a week, as Democrats scrambled to change the health-care plan so that its cost remained under $1 trillion and deficits could be cut.

House leaders are still seriously discussing a two-step process for considering the bill. First, the House would vote on the rules governing debate, rules that would deem the Senate version of the legislation, which many House Democrats dislike, as having passed.

If that plan is approved, the House then would consider its changes to the Senate measure in a second bill, called reconciliation. Both bills would need 216 votes to pass. In the last major House health-care vote, in November, 39 Democrats voted “no.” Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has announced that he’ll switch to “yes.”