Washington, October 08: A key U.S. Senate panel will vote on a sweeping healthcare overhaul on Tuesday as the battle over President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority enters a new stage.
The Senate Finance Committee’s healthcare bill received a rosy report card on Wednesday from a budget watchdog, which said it would meet Obama’s goal of reducing the budget deficit over 10 years.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office put the total cost at $829 billion, below Obama’s $900 billion goal, in a report likely to clear the way for committee approval and an eventual debate on the floor of the Senate.
“Today we stand closer than ever to fulfilling that fundamental promise, the one for which we have fought for more than 60 years,” Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said of healthcare reform.
He said the Democratic-controlled committee would vote on the bill on Tuesday.
The reforms are aimed at cutting costs, regulating insurers and expanding coverage to millions of Americans now without health insurance.
Once approved by the committee, Reid and other Senate Democratic leaders will merge the Finance Committee bill with one passed by the Senate health panel earlier this year for Senate consideration.
Republicans, who have been critical of the Democratic healthcare reform proposals, said that process would reshape the bill again, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell labeled the CBO report “irrelevant.”
“What matters is that the final bill will cost about a trillion dollars, vastly expand the role of government in people’s healthcare decisions, increase premiums and limit choice,” he said.
Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives are working to merge three healthcare bills into one in that chamber for a debate in the next few weeks.
All three House bills include a government-run “public” insurance option.
PELOSI EYES WINDFALL TAX
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a strong supporter of a government-run option, said she would send three versions of the public option proposals to the CBO for cost estimates.
“I think it’s very clear from our conversations with the members that the votes are there for a public option,” she told reporters.
Pelosi also said Democrats were looking at the possibility of a windfall profits tax on insurance companies’ income as part of healthcare reform, adding she had asked House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel to examine the issue and report back to her.
—Agencies