This is the most recent news about this issue, but there have been concerns about it for almost a month.Some of the biggest names in the Democratic Party have lined up to take the lead on healthcare reform, but the key to a bipartisan compromise may be the lesser-known Sen. Ron Wyden.
The Oregon Democrat doesn’t chair a committee in the upper chamber and represents one of the most liberal states. Yet Wyden has emerged as a potential game-changer by insisting the legislation have strong support across the aisle and forging a partnership with a GOP senator who has the Senate minority leader’s ear.
Republicans are so impressed with Wyden’s bill that some are convinced he represents President Obama’s best chance for getting major healthcare reform signed into law this Congress.
And while Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Max Baucus (Mont.) may chair the committees charged with shepherding the bill through the Senate, Wyden, a 6-foot-4 former college basketball player, has his own advantage: a standing invitation to play hoops with the president at the White House, which may come in handy when hashing out the final details behind the scenes.
For Wyden, the key to passing lasting healthcare reform is finding a legislative solution that can win at least 70 votes in the Senate — and he’s not shy about letting Democrats know that means dropping thoughts of a government-run public plan for the entire nation.
To make his case, he has met individually with more than 80 Senate colleagues to discuss his proposals. He has envisioned his role as neutral broker so vividly that during the height of the Democratic presidential primary, Wyden refused to back either Obama or then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Wyden counts among his closest friends Sens. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), who is a confidant of Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who is widely respected and has a knack for persuading colleagues to support compromises.
Bennett has signed on as the chief GOP co-sponsor of Wyden’s bill and has persuaded two other members of the Senate Republican leadership to join him: Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.).
“The history of bringing about enduring change, change that is going to last, change that people are going to rally behind — that history is predicated on bringing people together,” Wyden said during an interview in his Senate office. “There’s a real path of getting an upwards of 70 votes for historic health reform, where the country can say, after all these years of bickering and fighting and polarizing contentious debate, people really came together.”
Wyden’s support among Republicans is surprising because he is far from the far-right of his own party. He is the son of a muckraking journalist who smoked cigars with Fidel Castro. After college, Wyden founded the Oregon chapter of the Gray Panthers, a liberal advocacy group for senior citizens that borrowed its name from the radical black-power activists of the 1960s, albeit with some humor. One of the group’s first victories was passage of a referendum reducing the price of dentures.
“Sen. Wyden, by virtue of spending a lot of time on the issue and having attracted a lot of Republicans and Democrats, is a strong force,” said Alexander. “Senators that know an issue earn the respect of other senators, and we listen to them.”
Wyden’s standing with the left may be essential if he is to persuade the majority to strike a compromise over the principal sticking point in the debate: the availability of a government-run health insurance option.
However, he has already come under fire from unions for proposing to cut a tax exclusion for health benefits to pay for his plan.
And liberals are demanding that all Americans have access to a government-run healthcare plan. Republicans say that making a government-run health insurance option available to all Americans would be a march to “single-payer health insurance” and “socialized medicine,” and would drive private insurance companies out of business.
Wyden’s chief innovation is to be one of the first Democrats to call for universal coverage and for the private sector to serve as the principal provider.
Wyden said Republicans recognize everyone needs to be covered, and that the current system is not cost-effective because the insured are already paying the bills of the uninsured.
Democrats, he said, know the private sector must play “a significant role” to preserve innovation and cannot be saddled with price controls.
“I think the first thing our group has tried to bring to this discussion is a recognition there is philosophical truce almost within the Senate’s grasp and the country’s grasp,” Wyden said.
Wyden has sought a middle ground by proposing that the government offer a public plan option only in underserved areas, such as regions where consumers have only two private plans to choose from.
Alexander said he decided to support Wyden’s bill because it embodied two principles: “everybody insured” and “private sector.”
Gregg, who has participated regularly in negotiations over the healthcare proposal that Democratic leaders will soon bring to the floor, said Wyden has “shown you can develop a large coalition around an approach to solving this by using the private sector as the essence of a healthcare reform initiative.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, said that he, Finance Committee Chairman Baucus and other negotiators are borrowing from Wyden’s plan to assemble a package that lawmakers will soon consider on the Senate floor.
“I agree with a lot of things in the Wyden plan and I believe a lot of those will be included,” Grassley said. “A good share of it could be a model.”
WaPo, April 21:
Several senators sent a much weaker letter to their own leaders :As Congress returns to begin an intense debate over reshaping the nation's $2.2 trillion health-care system, prominent left-leaning organizations and liberal House members are issuing a warning to their Democratic allies: Don't cave on us.
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More than 70 House Democrats recently warned party leaders that they will not support a broad health reform bill that does not offer consumers a government-sponsored policy, and two unions withdrew from a high-profile health coalition because it would not endorse a public plan.
"It's way too early" to abandon what it considers a central plank in health reform, said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union. He said the organization pulled out of the bipartisan Health Reform Dialogue because it feared its friends in the coalition were sacrificing core principles too soon. "You don't make compromises with your allies."
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Many Republicans and industry executives say that any program modeled after Medicare -- with its power to set prices -- would have an unfair advantage over private-sector competitors and eventually force some companies out of business.
"The sacred cow on the left and the right is the public plan," said former senator Thomas A. Daschle, who was Obama's first choice to oversee the reform effort.
In comments last week, Nancy-Ann DeParle, head of the White House Office of Health Reform, said the ultimate solution may rest in how a public plan is defined.
"There are different breeds of public plans that could be part of this," she said, explaining that the Medicare model is not the only approach.
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The formal legislative process will start today, when Baucus convenes the first meeting of the Senate Finance Committee.
But in a letter to Kennedy, Court chastised the longtime lawmaker for compromising on health legislation in the past and warned Kennedy against succumbing again to the "for-profit, waste-enhancing" private insurance industry.
"Don't let the institution of the United States Senate use your name and credibility for something that goes against the principles you fought for your entire life," it said.
Kennedy spokesman Anthony Coley said the senator "believes that Americans should have the option of buying a public insurance plan if they believe that's the best choice for their families."
So to sum up: The current president was elected on a platform of providing universal healthcare access to all Americans, and almost certainly wouldn't be president if he hadn't promised that (Hillary Clinton would be). But now that the debate is starting in Congress, quite a few Democrats want to cave on that point and just make private health insurance mandatory.A new public insurance plan is an essential part of reforming the U.S. healthcare system, 16 Democratic senators declared in a letter to two powerful committee chairmen Wednesday.
The letter was addressed to the two senators expected to shape healthcare reform legislation; Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.).
“As members of key committees and leaders on health care issues, we write to support a public plan option as a core component of this reform,” the letter said. “There is no reason to believe that private insurers alone will meet the public purpose of ensuring coverage for all Americans at affordable prices for taxpayers.”
A public plan option “would provide competition to the sometimes dysfunctional private insurance market,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who originated the letter, said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday.
The public plan option, as it's called, emerged early on as one of the most controversial elements of the Democratic health reform plan. Though President Obama endorsed it on the campaign trail and Kennedy and Baucus have also offered their support, liberal Democratic lawmakers have expressed uneasiness about whether the proposal will survive the negotiating process.
More than 100 liberal House Democrats, represented by the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian-Pacific American Caucus, sent a similar letter to House leaders Tuesday.
“The support for a public plan is very broad,” said Brown, who noted he will add more senators to the letter over time. But, Brown acknowledged: “We don't have everybody in the Democratic caucus convinced.”
Brown emphasized that the senators who signed the letter are not threatening to reject a health reform bill that excludes a public plan option.
“We are not saying we will not support this without a public option,” he said. “This is not a condition to kill healthcare reform.”
In addition to Brown, the letter is signed by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Democratic Sens. Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.), Kirsten GillIbrand (N.Y.), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), Ted Kaufman (Del.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Jim Webb (Va.), as well as independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), who caucuses with the Democrats.
Proponents contend that the public plan must exist to serve as a bulwark against unfair insurance industry practices and as a means to drive changes to the delivery of healthcare services to make them more efficient and less costly.
To liberals, many of whom strongly support replacing the current healthcare market with a single-payer, government-run plan that insures everyone, the public plan option would represent a vital nod to their interests. Obama and senior congressional leaders have rejected a single-payer healthcare system on the grounds that they could not generate enough public support for the program because most people who have insurance get private coverage through their employers.
Brown said that even with strong insurance market reforms designed to prevent health plans from denying coverage or charging sky-high premiums to people with preexisting conditions, a public plan remains necessary. “Insurance companies have a reputation of staying one step ahead of the sheriff,” he said.
Republicans, along with healthcare and business interests, oppose the public plan option. The contend that the plan will muscle out private insurers by cutting payment rates to medical providers in order to charge lower premiums, and will lead to the federal government dominating the insurance market.
