HEALTHCARE REFORM, the centrepiece of US president Barack Obama’s domestic agenda, has moved a step closer to reality, with Independent senator Joe Lieberman agreeing to give Democrats the needed 60th vote in favour of a draft Bill in the Senate.
The Bill is likely to be presented this week, after it receives final clearance by the congressional budget office. Senate majority leader Harry Reid hopes to call a vote by Christmas Eve at the latest.
“We are on the precipice of an achievement that’s eluded congresses and presidents for generations – an achievement that will touch the lives of nearly every American,” Mr Obama said after meeting Senate Democrats on Tuesday afternoon.
Mr Obama said there was “broad consensus” on the Bill, which he claims will prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or dropping customers who fall ill.
Americans would no longer be forced to pay “unlimited amounts out of [their] own pocket[s]”, he added.
The actual contents of the 2,000-page Bill are in dispute.
Howard Dean, a physician and the liberal Democrat governor of Vermont, contradicted Mr Obama, telling ABC’s Good Morning America that the Bill would not prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would allow them to charge higher rates to the elderly.
Healthcare reform would eventually provide coverage to two-thirds of the country’s 46 million uninsured citizens. It is a prime example of Mr Obama’s maxim that one mustn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. “We simply cannot allow differences over individual elements of this plan to prevent us from meeting our responsibility to solve a longstanding and urgent problem for the American people,” he said.
The Senate negotiations have been so arduous, and the number of proposals sacrificed to political expediency so numerous, that it has been suggested Mr Obama should change his motto from “Yes We Can” to “Maybe We Can’t”.
The requirement for a filibuster-proof 60-40 majority in the Senate means that a single senator, in this instance Mr Lieberman, can destroy any provision he disagrees with.
“Just the thought of Joseph Lieberman makes some Democrats want to spit nails these days,” the New York Times reported. “But Mr Lieberman, the Connecticut Independent, is not the least troubled by his status as Capitol Hill’s master infuriator.”
Mr Reid dropped a proposal to extend Medicare government insurance for senior citizens to 55- to 65-year-olds, as well as a plan to allow private companies to use federal employees’ insurance plans, in order to gain Mr Lieberman’s vote.
Unless the idea of a government-provided plan creeps back into legislation when the House Bill is reconciled with the Senate Bill, Mr Lieberman will have killed the public option.
For all their annoyance with Mr Lieberman, the White House is understood to be even more angry with Dr Dean for leading a liberal backlash against the amputated Bill. Dr Dean calls the reform a bailout for health insurance companies. “We’ve gotten to this stage . . . in Washington where passing any Bill is a victory, and that’s the problem,” Mr Dean said.
“At this point, the Bill does more harm than good.”
In an example of powerful lobbies working against the public interest, the Senate on Tuesday evening voted down Senator Byron Dorgan’s amendment, which would have allowed less expensive imported pharmaceutical products to be sold in the US.
Mr Dorgan estimates the measure would save consumers $100 billion (€68 billion) over a decade. The congressional budget office says it would save the government $20 billion.
But drug companies have contributed $130 million to election campaigns over the past decade, placing them among the top 10 donors. The White House opposed the Dorgan amendment as part of a deal to secure the drug companies’ support for healthcare reform.
Senator John McCain argued the White House should have denounced the drug companies for raising prices by almost 10 per cent this year. The defeat of the amendment “contributes to the enormous cynicism on the part of the American people about the way we do business here”, Mr McCain said.
That cynicism showed in a Washington Post-ABC News poll published yesterday. A majority of Americans (53 per cent) disapprove of the way Mr Obama is handling healthcare reform.
The same percentage believe that costs to themselves will rise if present proposals become law.