House Revs Up Health-reform Work As Costs In Focus

 

Saturday, Jul 18,2009, 10:57:35 AM   Click:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Action on health care reform has started up a gear in the House of Representatives on Thursday, with three separate committees hammering details of a large White House supported the bill that could ensure the health insurance to almost all Americans and transform the U.S. healthcare system.

Barack Obama President asked Congress to complete its work on an overhaul of health care before August, saying Wednesday that "we are now closer to the goal of health reform that we have never summer, "after the Senate passed the Health Committee version of a reform project.

Two committees of the House ways and Education and Labor, May vote as early as Thursday on the bill that aims to cover 97% of Americans.


But Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate are still deeply divided over how to pay for an overhaul. A House bill unveiled Tuesday would impose new taxes on wealthy Americans to pay for reform, which is estimated to cost about $1 trillion over 10 years.

Democrats, including Obama, say that their overhaul will lower costs, but Republicans on Thursday seized on a warning from the head of the Congressional Budget Office that the legislation he's seen so far would raise health-care costs and not lower them.

Trio of committees at work

Members of the House committees on Ways and Means, Education and Labor and Energy and Commerce were all hunkering down Thursday on details of the bill that would set up a public health-insurance plan to compete with private insurers and create mandates for employer-provided and individual coverage.

Supporters like Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, said the bill will control rising health-care costs.

"It has to stop and it has to stop now," he said about spiraling health-care bills.

But Republicans in both the House and Senate are slamming the Democrats' proposal to impose taxes on upper-income individuals and families, with some saying it amounts to a job-killing tax on small businesses.


"President Obama and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have proposed tax increases that will cause small-business jobs to be lost," said Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican on the Senate Finance Committee who is a key player in health-reform talks.

CBO warning

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf was asked by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., if the bills lawmakers are considering would "bend the cost curve." Elmendorf responded: "The curve is being raised," according to the Associated Press.

Republicans jumped on the warning.

"The director of the Congressional Budget Office today confirmed that the Democrats' government-run plan will make health care more costly than ever, making clear that one of the Democrats' chief talking points is pure fiction," said House Republican Leader John Boehner.

Paying for the overhaul is a major sticking point in the process. House Democrats have proposed surtaxes ranging from 1% to 5.4% on incomes of $350,000 or more.