Healthcare reform faces challenges in U.S. Senate
By Kevin Drawbaugh
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's U.S. healthcare overhaul plan has cleared an important Senate hurdle but lawmakers warned on Sunday of challenges ahead in winning support for passage, even among Obama's own Democrats.
On Saturday, Senate Democrats gathered the 60 votes needed to open floor debate on the plan, which would make the biggest changes in the $2.5 trillion healthcare system in 40 years. It is the Obama administration's top domestic policy initiative.
No Republicans backed the procedural motion and a handful of conservative Democrats, whose votes were crucial, supported the floor debate but remained uncommitted to the bill itself.
One of those was Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, who said on Sunday that he could not support the plan without big changes.
"If there are a whole host of other items that are the same as they are right now, I wouldn't vote to get it off the floor," Nelson said on the "ABC This Week" TV news program.
Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman, usually an ally of Democrats, said he could not support the bill either if the "public option" -- for a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private firms -- stays in the bill.
"I don't think anybody feels this bill ... will pass" as written, Lieberman said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.
Debate will begin on November 30 and is expected to last at least three weeks.
The House of Representatives has passed its own version. Differences between the Senate and House versions would have to be reconciled in January before Obama could sign a final measure.
The Senate bill would expand coverage to millions of the uninsured and it would bar insurers from denying coverage over pre-existing conditions. It also would require virtually all Americans to buy insurance and set up exchanges to shop for healthcare coverage.
While offering subsidies to help low-income workers afford coverage, the plan also would raise the payroll tax on high-income workers that finances the Medicare system that provides for the elderly. It also would impose a tax on high-cost "Cadillac" insurance plans.
Republicans have vowed to delay or block the bill, which they say is a costly government intrusion in the private sector that would raise premiums, reduce choices and increase taxes.
"It puts big costs onto states," said Republican Senator Lamar Alexander on the "Fox News Sunday" program. "What we need to do is to go back to step-by-step efforts to reduce costs."
The "public option" component of the bill is negotiable, said Senator Richard Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat.
"It has been," Durbin said on "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
Pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer Inc and Merck & Co Inc and business groups are opposing the "public option." Drugmakers, business groups and insurers such as UnitedHealth Group Inc and WellPoint Inc are on track to spend more than $500 million this year to influence lawmakers' views on reshaping an industry that fuels one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
"The insurance industry is about the most highly concentrated industry in the country," said Democratic Senator Charles Schumer on CBS' "Face the Nation" news program. "So you need to inject some competition into the insurance industry.
"The best way to do that is a public option. And the program that we've put together is set up by the government but then it's on its own. There is no intent for it to compete unfairly against private insurance," he said.
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio said he would seek amendments relating to the pharmaceutical industry, including giving the government the right to negotiate drug prices for Medicare prescription drugs for the elderly, reimportation of drugs from lower-cost countries and to bring down the cost of brand-name biotechnology drugs.
"They can be $20,000 to $50,000 to even $100,000 a year," he said on CNN, referring to the cost of drugs to consumers. "There's no competition, no generic competition."