Reed: "Difficult decisions" ahead on health-care overhaul
6:30 PM Tue, Jun 02, 2009 | Permalink
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Reed left the meeting, in the State Dining Room of the White House, with what he called "a sense that we've got to get it done and we can get it done.'' Reed cautioned, however, that "there will be difficult decisions'' ahead on the financing of the health-care overhaul, the possibility of a public plan, and a host of other policy questions. Mr. Obama also made a forceful case for the option of a federally sponsored health insurance plan - a prospect certain to inspire Republican opposition. The partisan session underlined the fact that, just underneath the strong general support for swift action to retool American medicine, there is strong disagreement about some of the specifics - even within the Democratic Party. "We cannot avoid bringing about change in our health-care system," Obama told Democratic members of the two committees that he charged with sending an overhaul bill to the Senate floor before the August legislative recess. "Soaring health-care costs are unsustainable for families, they are unsustainable for businesses, and they are unsustainable for governments, both at the federal, state and local levels." Participants in the meeting heartily endorsed that proposition. But they acknowledged that they are a long way from tackling the toughest details of how to execute the health-care overhaul that so many seek. One emerging Democratic split is over how to pay for the expansion of medical coverage to the roughly 50 million Americans who are uninsured. On one side are those - led by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana - who argue that new taxes on work-based medical benefits are needed to help cover the huge up-front cost of universal health coverage. "It's on the table. It's an option,'' Baucus told reporters outside the White House after the meeting. On the other side are such Democrats as Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, a senior member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, who noted that, as a candidate, Obama rejected GOP candidate John McCain's proposal last year to cut the tax exemption for employer-based health insurance. "You don't want to have some retiree all of a sudden discovering there's some new tax on his health care,'' Dodd said in an interview.
Even Rhode Island's liberal Senate delegation echoed the division to some extent. Without taking a firm stand, health committee member Reed said reductions in the tax exemption on health insurance "are going to be considered.'' He added, "We've got to protect those in the low-income and middle-income ranges.'' Reed declined to state specifically where he thinks the line should be drawn between the middle-income Americans who should be shielded from tax hikes to help pay for the new medical system and the rich taxpayers who should bear the added tax burden. "That's going to be part of this great debate,'' Reed said in an interview at one of the White House gates on Pennsylvania Avenue. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a new member of the health committee, flatly rejected reducing the health-care tax exemption, except for the class he described as "CEOs with concierge health-care benefits.'' Whitehouse pronounced himself "not interested'' in taxing the medical insurance of union members whose coverage is part of the benefits package negotiated with their employers. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the ailing Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the health committee, was absent from yesterday's meeting but remains close, by all accounts, to the health-care negotiations. Mr. Obama put it this way to reporters outside the meeting with Senate Democrats: "I want to mention, by the way, that I spoke to Senator Kennedy earlier this morning. He is gung-ho, ready to go. He had a whole range of ideas in terms of about how he'd like to see this move, and he's grateful that Chris [Dodd] has been taking on a lot of the work in the health committee, but he is very enthusiastic about our progress.'' On the proposal for an federally sponsored alternative to private health-insurance coverage, Reed said that while Mr. Obama stopped short of "a firm commitment,'' he did speak "very enthusiastically about the public-plan option.'' That is not a complete surprise; Mr. Obama suggested during a White House kick-off for his health care campaign in February that a public plan might help keep private insurers honest. But his emphatic statements to the senators yesterday suggested that he may push hard to have the public option included in the new medical system. The insurance industry - and many Republicans - view the optional public plan as a direct threat to the private insurance market. Republicans were not invited to the Wednesday afternoon session, but their comments on Capitol Hill underlined the resistance that a public plan will generate. "I don't think Americans want to put Washington between themselves and their doctors. They don't want a Canadian plan or a European plan with long waiting lines and rationing,'' said Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a senior member of the health committee. Gregg was asked whether the majority Democrats have the muscle to impose a public plan on unwilling Republicans. "The public plan is nothing more than a stalking horse for a single-payer national system,'' Gregg answered, using the industry jargon for federalized health care, such as the Medicare system for old people. "That will be hard to sell, if the people understand it." 
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