House Majority Leader takes the role of mediator to help write health reform bill
27 03 09 - 12:01
Hoyer playing health reform referee
By Jeffrey Young - The Hill
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has taken on the role of mediator between the three powerful House committee chairmen tasked with writing a massive health reform bill.
This strategy by the House Democratic leadership demonstrates that they have internalized one of the lessons learned by the failure of the Clinton administration’s health reform effort in the 1990s, when committee and subcommittee chairman squabbled over jurisdiction – and facilitated the demise of a major initiative and the end of Democratic control of Congress for 12 years.
Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) will share responsibility for the package this year that would rearrange the entire healthcare system and could cost upwards of $1 trillion.
The chairmen have already shown signs that they are dedicated to cooperating and putting a health reform bill on the House floor before Congress recesses in August.
“I intend to spend a lot of time working with the various committees who have already made a determination they’re going to work together,” Hoyer told reporters Thursday, including convening meetings with the chairmen and the various health subcommittees’ chairmen.
Hoyer stressed that the Democratic leadership would not take a firm hand with the chairmen over the content of the health reform bill, however. “I don’t want to make those judgments. My role is to coordinate rather than impose my view,” he said. “I’m not going to second-guess them.”
Though legislation is months away, President Obama’s proposal to create a new federally run health benefits program is already perhaps the foremost sticking point in his budget request.
Hoyer indicated that House Democrats are committed to including a public plan option in their bill. “We believe that a public option clearly is going to be necessary” to provide consumers with an alternative to private insurance and to spur competition within the insurance industry, Hoyer said.
Hoyer noted that Obama campaigned on the need for a public plan and said it had broad support among House Democrats.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has also indicated support for creating a public plan, Hoyer said, but Baucus is trying to strike a deal on a bipartisan healthcare bill with committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has rejected the idea.
“That’s something that [Baucus] and Sen. Grassley will have to work out,” Hoyer said.
The health insurance industries two leading trade groups, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, reiterated their opposition to a public plan in a letter sent to senators Tuesday.
The insurance industry has made concessions on other points, such as agreeing to accept all consumers and not charge higher premiums to sicker people, if health reform includes a mandate that all people sign up for coverage.
Hoyer said the threat of a new government healthcare program prompted the insurers to change their position on those issues. “If the public plan weren’t on the table, we wouldn’t have gotten those expressions from the insurance companies,” Hoyer said.
Republicans have also opposed the public plan, warning that Democratic leaders want a national single-payer healthcare system that would supplant private insurance, as many liberals favor. Hoyer rejected that charge.
“There is, of course, in the country and in our caucus, significant support for a single-payer system. Now, I don’t think there’s majority support for a single-payer system. The president is not talking about a single-payer system and I don’t expect us to do a single-payer system,” Hoyer said.
As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did earlier Thursday, Hoyer defended the House’s decision to include budget reconciliation in its budget.
“Reconciliation on healthcare is a fallback position. It is not the preferred option. The preferred option is creating a bipartisan consensus,” Hoyer said.
Republicans howled in protest that reconciliation would enable Democrats to run roughshod over the minority in the Senate because the procedure allows legislation to pass with just 51 votes, unlike the 60 usually needed to move bills in the upper chamber.
Senate Democrats, including Baucus and Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) opposed adding reconciliation to the budget, though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday he supports having the option available when the House and Senate combine their budgets later this Spring.
Republicans argue that Democrats, by having reconciliation in their hip pocket, can pull out of any negotiations, whenever they want, making those talks potentially pointless for the GOP.
Hoyer said that if Democrats acted in that way, the Republicans would have a right to complain.
“If they are negotiating in good faith and then we pull the rug out from under them, I think that would be harmful to our objective of passage with a degree of bipartisan support and therefore credibility in the public,” he said.
Still, the fact that reconciliation could be used should encourage Republicans to make a deal so their ideas are included in the bill, according to Hoyer. “I think that hopefully is an incentive, as well, to our friends on the other side of the aisle who want to get to an agreement,” he said.
Hoyer also reiterated that Democrats want to do health reform under pay-as-you-go rules so that new spending does not add to the deficit. “The president and we want it to be deficit-neutral,” he said. “People talk about a trillion dollars but also people talk about very, very large savings,” Hoyer said.