President Barack Obama saluted Wednesday the “progress” of fellow Democrats in the Senate on a bill to overhaul the US health care system, his top domestic priority.
The bill “contains Democratic ideas, Republican ideas and plenty of compromises in between,” Obama said, hailing the Senate’s “progress last night, with a creative new framework I believe will pave the way for final passage.”
Obama said he backed the effort, “especially since it’s aimed at increasing choice and competition and lowering costs.”
The president and top Democratic lawmakers hope to pass the health care bill this year, but the sweeping proposals face blanket opposition in the Senate from Republicans and worries from some Democrats about the 848-billion-dollar price tag.
Following days of tough negotiations, Democratic senators said Tuesday they had reached an agreement between liberals and centrists on a government-funded “public option” that would compete with private insurers.
“It is a consensus that includes a public option and will help ensure the American people win in two ways: one, insurance companies will face more competition, and two, the American people will have more choices,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, without providing further details.
But he also recognized that not all 10 lawmakers involved in the negotiations agree on all the plan’s details, nor will all the 58 Democratic and two independent senators he needs to pass the legislation.
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold underlined the concerns of many in his party, saying he does not support replacing a public option with an entirely private one.
“We need to have some competition for the insurance industry to keep rates down and save taxpayer dollars,” he said.
The House of Representatives adopted its own version of the text on November 7. Once the Senate passes its bill, the two chambers will need to reconcile their versions before sending the legislation to Obama to sign into law.
The United States is the only industrialized democracy that does not ensure that all of its citizens have health care coverage, with an estimated 36 million Americans uninsured.
And Washington spends vastly more on health care — both per person and as a share of national income as measured by gross domestic product — than other industrialized democracies, with no meaningful advantage in quality of care, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
