The US Congress is “very close” to forging a compromise that will pave the way for remaking US health care, President Barack Obama’s top priority, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday.
Pelosi, speaking after talks with Obama at the White House, said “it’s possible” the Senate and House of Representatives could meld their rival versions of the historic legislation by the end of the month.
“I think we’re very close to reconciliation, respectful of the challenges
— policy and otherwise — in the House and in the Senate,” she said, flanked by the chairs of key House committees.
House Democrats were due to hold talks on Thursday to discuss the issue further.
Senior lawmakers and staff in both chambers of the US Congress, spurred on by White House aides, have been working to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill, hoping to iron out key differences and send a compromise measure to Obama before his marquee State of the Union annual speech.
Pelosi declined to detail specific disagreements or to say whether the House was prepared to accept key provisions of the Senate’s less-expansive approach to what would be the most sweeping overhaul of its kind in four decades.
“It’s not a question of adopting this or that. It’s about addressing and meeting the needs of the American people — that this be affordable for the middle class, and to do that we have to hold the insurance companies accountable,” she said.
Both measures aim to extend health care coverage to more than 30 million out of the 36 million Americans that lack it, end abusive health insurance company practices, and curb soaring costs that take giant bites out of family and government budgets.
But the Senate stripped out a government-backed “public option” plan to compete with private insurers in order to win over the backing of a handful of centrist Democrats without whom the bill would not have secured the 60 votes needed to pass in the 100-seat body.
Another potential obstacle is the House bill’s tougher restrictions on federal funds subsidizing abortions: While pro-choice lawmakers denounce the limits, some centrist Democrats say they will withhold support without them.
The United States is the world’s richest nation but the only industrialized democracy that does not provide health care coverage to all of its citizens.
As a nation, the United States spends more than double what Britain, France and Germany do per person on health care.
But it lags behind other countries in life expectancy and infant mortality, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
