House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has eliminated the most obvious avenue for completing healthcare reform, saying the House will not embrace the version of the legislation already approved by the Senate, the Washington Post reports. Pelosi had struggled to sell the Senate legislation to reluctant Democrats since Republican Scott Brown's upset victory in the Massachusetts Senate election cost Democrats their filibuster-proof Senate majority. House approval of the Senate package would have delivered the bill quickly to the president's desk, reports the Post.
Passage of a comprehensive healthcare reform bill looked impossible after the Democrats' loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts. As an alternative, lawmakers in both parties said, some pieces of the bills already passed by the House and the Senate could be pulled out and packaged together in a measure that would command broad support, the New York Times reports. The consensus measure would be less ambitious than the bills approved last year. It would extend insurance coverage to perhaps 12 million to 15 million people.
A majority of Americans say President Obama and congressional Democrats should suspend work on the healthcare bill that has been on the verge of passage and consider alternatives that would draw more Republican support, a USA Today/Gallup Poll finds. Those surveyed are inclined to say Obama and Democratic leaders have erred in making healthcare the top legislative priority for now. Forty-six percent say that healthcare is important but that there are other problems they should address first; 19% say healthcare should not be a major priority.
Consumer groups, patient advocates, and doctors have called on Democrats not to abandon the comprehensive health overhaul they have worked so long to pass. "The legislation passed by the House and Senate would broaden access to quality, affordable healthcare to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured or underinsured," wrote leaders of AARP, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Consumers Union, Families USA, and Service Employees International Union. The joint letter was sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
President Obama has signaled that he might be willing to scale back his proposed healthcare overhaul to a version that could attract bipartisan support, but it was not clear that even a stripped-down bill could get through Congress anytime soon, the New York Times reports. Inside the White House, top aides to the president said President Obama had made no decision on how to proceed, and insisted that his preference was still to win passage of a far-reaching healthcare measure that would extend coverage to more than 30 million people by 2019, reports the Times.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struggled to sell the Senate version of the legislation to reluctant Democrats, even as party moderates raised doubts about forging ahead without bipartisan support, the Washington Post reports. Despite Republican Scott Brown's victory in a Senate special election in Massachusetts, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV) have pledged to complete work on the massive bill they started nearly a year ago. But they have yet to identify a clear way forward that will appeal broadly to their rank-and-file, the Post reports.