The glow from a healthcare triumph faded quickly for US President Barack Obama as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House of Representatives has nowhere to go in the Senate.
Speaking from the White House about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and “take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people.”
The problem is that the Senate won’t run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate.
If a government plan is part of the deal, “as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” said Senator Joe Lieberman, the independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome Republican maneuvers to kill the bill.
He spoke on the Fox television network.
“The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, told the CBS network.
The US is the only developed country that does not have a comprehensive national healthcare plan for all citizens. Nearly 50 million Americans are uninsured.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators may not be able to finish healthcare this year.
Nonetheless, the House vote provided an important lesson in how to succeed with less-than-perfect party unity, and one that Senate Democrats may be able to adapt. House Democrats overcame their own divisions and broke an impasse that threatened the bill after liberals grudgingly accepted tougher restrictions on abortion funding, as abortion opponents demanded.
In Senate, the stumbling block is the idea of the government competing with private insurers. Liberals may have to swallow hard and accept a deal without a public plan to keep the legislation alive. As in the House, the compromise appears to be to the right of the political spectrum.
Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, who voted for a version of the Senate bill in committee, has given the Democrats a possible way out. She’s proposing to allow a government plan as a last resort, if after a few years premiums keep escalating and local health insurance markets remain in the grip of a few big companies. This is the “trigger” option.
That approach appeals to moderates such as Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat.
“If the private market fails to reform, there would be a fallback position,” she said last week. “It should be triggered by choice and affordability, not by political whim.”
For now, Reid is trying to find the votes for a different approach: a government plan from which individual states could opt.
The Senate is not likely to jump ahead this week on healthcare.
Also See: EDITORIAL : A quiet, but strong Obama
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