Democrats will advance a major health reform bill in 2009, per Congressman Waxman
30 01 09 - 11:57
Waxman: ‘I’m committed’ to health reform in 2009
By Jeffrey Young - The Hill
Democrats will advance a major health reform bill before the end of the year, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) affirmed Thursday.
“We need to get this job accomplished this year and get the bill to the president,” Waxman said at a conference staged by the liberal health reform advocacy group Families USA.
Faced with gargantuan economic problems and myriad other priorities, President Obama and key Democrats in the House and Senate maintain that they can succeed in the arduous task of enacting a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system.
“We don’t intend to let delay sap the opportunity to finally enact the legislation we’ve waited decades for. The situation is too critical. The need is too great,” Waxman said.
Senate Democrats such as Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (Mont.) have been at work for months drafting the legislation that will form the basis of health reform.
Kennedy, who is ailing from a brain tumor, has insisted that he wants health reform to move this year. Baucus has expressed the need for urgent action but has not committed to a firm timeframe for enactment.
Their House counterparts have been less evidently busy. Waxman, along with Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), will take the lead on developing the lower chamber’s legislative vehicle.
The Democratic lawmakers who will lead the health reform effort in Congress have broadly adopted Obama’s platform, which the president says would preserve the private healthcare system while providing federal assistance for the uninsured to obtain coverage thorough private or public plans.
Waxman’s confident pronouncement tracks closely to the timeline preferred by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “[W]e will take a major step forward this year to increase the number of people who have healthcare coverage,” her spokesman said Monday.
But not all congressional Democrats are so sanguine about the prospects for such massive legislation.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) recently indicated that the “incremental approach” typified by the pending expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and spending on healthcare matters in the economic stimulus might be more feasible.
Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), who chairs the subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee that will write much of the early draft of any health reform legislation, recently predicted it would take all of 2009 and possibly part of 2010 to get a bill passed.
“I would much rather see it done that way, incrementally, than to go out and just bite something you can't chew. We've been down that road. I still remember 1994,” Clyburn said on C-SPAN Sunday, referring to the Clinton administration’s failed attempt at health reform.
For his part, President Obama reportedly plans to launch his effort on healthcare in March, alongside health reform czar and Health and Human Services Secretary-nominee Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader.
On the campaign trail, Obama vowed to enact health reform by the end of his first term.
“I’m committed to getting it done this year,” Waxman reiterated to reporters after addressing the conference, though he declined to specify when his committee would hold hearings or begin writing legislation, indicating that congressional Democrats and the White House needed to come to an agreement on the substance and timing of the legislative push.
“I’m waiting to talk more with the administration and work that through with them and my colleagues in the House and Senate. We’re going to have to coordinate our efforts as best we can to see if we can all be on the same page,” Waxman said.