WASHINGTON – The White House cranked up its push for a quick healthcare vote in Congress yesterday, criticising rising health insurance premiums at a meeting with top industry executives and wooing lawmakers.
After the White House session attended by President Barack Obama and five of the country’s top health insurers, health secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Mr Obama had criticised the industry’s “jaw-dropping” rate hikes.
“The meeting was really focused on what is happening with the kind of jaw-dropping rate increases that people are seeing,” Ms Sebelius said, calling on insurers to be more transparent and to file requests for rate increases online.
The day after Mr Obama launched a last-ditch drive to pass a sweeping healthcare overhaul, he also summoned groups of liberal and moderate Democrats in the House of Representatives to meetings at the White House to seek their support.
House Democratic leaders said they were confident they could win the 216 votes needed to pass the Senate-approved health Bill even though about a dozen abortion-rights opponents – including some who voted for the Bill in November – say they would be willing to oppose it.
“Every legislative vote is a heavy lift around here. You assume nothing,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters. “We will pass a Bill.”
Mr Obama renewed his drive for a healthcare overhaul on Wednesday, forging ahead with a revamp of the $2.5 trillion healthcare system designed to cut costs, regulate insurers and expand coverage.
The overhaul looked to be dead in its tracks in January when Republicans deprived Democrats of their crucial 60th Senate vote by winning a Massachusetts special election, stopping negotiations to merge the House and Senate-passed Bills into a final product for the president to sign.
At the White House, Ms Sebelius met the insurance company chief executives to press them to justify premium increases. Mr Obama dropped into the meeting to hand the executives a letter from an Ohio woman whose insurance premium is set to go up 40 per cent, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Insurers have said they must raise rates to cover skyrocketing healthcare costs at a time when more people are dropping coverage.
Mr Obama planned to meet 11 liberal House members and seven moderate House members at the White House as Congress steams toward a mid-March vote on his sweeping overhaul.
The biggest question remains whether the House can pass the Senate Bill. There is little margin for error – the House passed its version of the Bill in November with only three votes to spare.
House Democrats have been unhappy with provisions in the Senate Bill, and Mr Obama offered changes to ease those concerns in the last few weeks. They include watering down a tax on expensive insurance plans and boosting federal subsidies.
Those fixes to the Senate Bill will be passed separately by the House and Senate through a process called reconciliation that allows a simple majority vote in the 100-member Senate rather than the 60 votes needed to clear Republican procedural hurdles.
That approach, which can be used only for budget-related measures, would bypass rules that require 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles in the 100-member Senate.
Reconciliation needs only a simple Senate majority of 51 votes. But it cannot be used to change the Senate provision that weakened language banning the use of federal funds for abortion, and as a result Democratic Representative Bart Stupak said he would vote against the Bill – and that up to a dozen other Democrats might too. – (Reuters)