THE WHITE HOUSE has sought to play down differences between the two versions of healthcare legislation passed in US congress late last week as Democrats prepared to meld them into one. A top Republican predicted the legislation would cause great unrest among Democrats.
The US senate passed its version of healthcare reform, President Barack Obama’s top legislative priority, on Christmas Eve with no Republican votes. The house of representatives passed its bill on November 7th, with just one Republican vote.
Democratic lawmakers will begin the tricky task of resolving differences between the two versions in early January, such as whether to keep a new government-run insurance programme as the House of Representatives envisages, how to craft language to restrict abortion funding, and what approach to use to pay for the overhaul.
Meanwhile, Republicans vowed to keep battling to block it and expressed hope some Democrats may yet turn against it.
“The bill is not law yet,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on ABC’s This Week programme, adding that there were rumours of more possible Democratic defections amid unhappiness over the healthcare proposals.
US representative Parker Griffith of Alabama switched parties on December 22nd and became a Republican.
“There is great unrest in the Democratic Party,” McConnell said. “The reason for that is the surveys [opinion polls] indicate the American people are overwhelmingly opposed to having the government take over all of their healthcare.”
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, on NBC's Meet the Press, played down differences between the house and senate bills, calling them "virtually identical" in key provisions.
“The major parts of healthcare reform that the president sought to have enacted as a candidate are now very close to happening, and he thinks the commonality between the two proposals overlaps quite a bit,” Gibbs said.
Once Democratic lawmakers craft a single, unified bill, the house and senate would have to pass it again before Obama can sign it into law.
The overhaul would forge the biggest changes in the multi- trillion dollar US healthcare system since the 1965 creation of the Medicare government health insurance programme for the elderly and disabled.
One possible sticking point in the house-senate bill is over the so-called public option, the proposed government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers – an idea that is very popular among liberal Democrats. The senate discarded the idea in its bill, but the house included it.
– (Reuters)