WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Democrats broke a logjam in President Barack Obama’s drive to revamp the costly U.S. healthcare system yesterday when a group of party conservatives accepted a compromise that allowed an overhaul bill to advance in the House of Representatives.
The agreement with four conservative congressmen from Obama’s Democratic Party sparked immediate grumbling from liberals, Republicans and others even as the breakthrough allowed a key House committee to take up the bill.
Obama, whose chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, worked with members of Congress to craft the compromise, said he was grateful that lawmakers “are working so hard to find common ground.”
“Those efforts are extraordinarily constructive in strengthening this legislation and bringing down its cost,” Obama said.
Since taking office six months ago, Obama has made an overhaul of healthcare, which accounts for one-sixth of the U.S. economy, his top legislative priority and traveled to North Carolina and Virginia on Wednesday to push reform.
Obama insists it is crucial to a broader economic recovery and has pushed lawmakers — due to recess for a month soon — to forge a deal quickly to rein in healthcare costs, improve care and cover most of the 46 million uninsured Americans.
Representative Mike Ross, a leader of the conservative Democrats known as the “Blue Dogs,” told reporters the agreement, which followed lengthy negotiations with party leaders and the White House, would make healthcare reform more palatable to fiscal conservatives in both parties.
The Blue Dogs had put the brakes on the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee, the last of three House committees to vote on it, over concerns about costs and other issues.
After Democrats met in closed session, committee chairman Henry Waxman said the full panel would consider amendments today with final passage tomorrow. No amendments would be approved that did not fit the deal made with conservatives, he said.
However, House leaders could change the legislation before the full House votes in September.
Democratic Representative Eliot Engel said House leaders had left liberals on the panel with little choice but to vote for it as it stands or stall its progress.
“In a way, a number of us feel we’ve been held hostage,” Engel said.
While the bill still includes a government-run insurance programme, liberals said a requirement that Washington negotiate prices with doctors and hospitals — putting the public plan on the same footing as private insurers — would make coverage unaffordable for many.
The compromise would exempt 86 percent of small businesses from being required to contribute to health insurance for their workers. It would also allow states to set up insurance cooperatives alongside a national government health insurance plan.
In the Senate, Republicans and Democrats negotiating a healthcare reform deal also got a boost from congressional budget analysts who priced their bill at less than $900 billion over 10 years — below some cost estimates of $1 trillion or more.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said the Congressional Budget Office reported the plan would reduce the federal deficit, spur employer-provided health coverage and provide insurance coverage to 95 percent of Americans.
Three Democrats and three Republicans on the Senate Finance panel have edged closer to a deal this week that could form the heart of an eventual Senate healthcare plan.
“I am confident they will get a bill … a bipartisan bill will come out of that committee,” Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid told reporters.
Senator Charles Grassley, one of the panel’s three Republicans involved in the talks, said in a Reuters interview the negotiators were making great progress but tough issues remained on financing and cost containment.
Senate Finance negotiations focused on a plan that would use nonprofit cooperatives to compete with private insurers to drive down costs, not the government option plan favored by Obama and many other Democrats.
