Senate Dems Look to Obama to Move Health-Care Votes
By Dan Balz
WashPost
For many months, advocates of health care reform have implored President Obama to outline in greater detail the provisions he's prepared to push and defend. So far he has largely resisted, offering broad principles but still leaving the details to Congress. But the time of hanging back is quickly coming to an end if he hopes to find the 60 votes needed to pass a bill in the Senate.
Tuesday's votes in the Senate Finance Committee against the public health insurance option -- which saw five and then three Democrats vote no -- moved the health care debate to a new point, though one long anticipated.
With all Republican and a number of centrist Democrats, including Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, opposed to the public option, it has been clear for some time that it would not survive debate in the committee. The option now faces potentially insurmountable odds in the whole Senate, though proponents vowed to keep pushing for it.
Obama supported the public option, but has strongly signaled his willingness to allow it to die if that is the price of winning broader support for overhauling the health care system. He will soon have to choose between those Democrats who favor it, including many of his most passionate supporters from last year's election, and those who oppose it, many of whom come from states or districts won last year by Sen. John McCain. And he will have to persuade the losing side to stick with him, regardless.
(Original here.)
WashPost
For many months, advocates of health care reform have implored President Obama to outline in greater detail the provisions he's prepared to push and defend. So far he has largely resisted, offering broad principles but still leaving the details to Congress. But the time of hanging back is quickly coming to an end if he hopes to find the 60 votes needed to pass a bill in the Senate.
Tuesday's votes in the Senate Finance Committee against the public health insurance option -- which saw five and then three Democrats vote no -- moved the health care debate to a new point, though one long anticipated.
With all Republican and a number of centrist Democrats, including Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, opposed to the public option, it has been clear for some time that it would not survive debate in the committee. The option now faces potentially insurmountable odds in the whole Senate, though proponents vowed to keep pushing for it.
Obama supported the public option, but has strongly signaled his willingness to allow it to die if that is the price of winning broader support for overhauling the health care system. He will soon have to choose between those Democrats who favor it, including many of his most passionate supporters from last year's election, and those who oppose it, many of whom come from states or districts won last year by Sen. John McCain. And he will have to persuade the losing side to stick with him, regardless.
(Original here.)
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2 Comments:
My concern with this health care reform, as an Independent, is that it’s all over the place, there are not enough specifics and it must be put into writing and as if “written in stone” so that not every illegal that comes to the US will get free healthcare and those that work hard all their citizen life in US pay for every “Tom, Dick and Harry”
This comment is identical to the comment in the following item, indicating that health care astroturfing continues.
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