Democrats agree compromise deal on health reform

Democrats agree compromise deal on health reform
By Edward Luce in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: July 30 2009 00:41 | Last updated: July 30 2009 00:41
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/149cdbbe-7c94-11de-a7bf-00144feabdc0.html


Democratic leaders struck a tentative compromise on Wednesday with their conservative “Blue Dog” colleagues that will enable healthcare reform to move forward in the House of Representatives after several weeks of internal bickering.

The deal provides a much higher level of exemption for small businesses, which had been a principal sticking point for the Blue Dog Democrats, and shaves off $100bn in costs from the 10-year $1,000bn plan

But it also comes with a sting in the tail for President Barack Obama.

As part of the compromise, the House will not vote as a whole on the bill before it goes into recess tomorrow. This means that neither chamber will have responded to Mr Obama’s call for passage of healthcare reform before Capitol Hill breaks up for the summer.

“We did give them a deadline, and sort of we missed that deadline but that’s OK,” Mr Obama said on Wednesday at a rally in North Carolina to boost healthcare reform. “We don’t want to just do it quickly, we want to do it right.”

Wednesday’s compromise cleared what could have been a damaging impasse in the lower chamber going into the congressional recess.

Under the deal, which was supported by only four of the seven Blue Dog lawmakers involved in the talks, small businesses with annual revenues of less than $500,000 a year will be exempt from paying for employee healthcare – double the previous ceiling.

In addition, lawmakers agreed to the creation of healthcare co-operatives, which conservative Democrats have put forward as an alternative to the public health insurance option that liberals support.

Under the compromise both the cooperatives and the public option will be retained.

It is not clear whether the public option will survive a similar drawn-out negotiation in the Senate finance committee, which has yet to achieve an equivalent breakthrough.

Wednesday’s deal will enable the White House to say that the health reform train remains on track, even if it is moving painfully slowly. But Republican opponents of the deal believe the delays will give them extra latitude to unpick the weakening coalition in favour of reform during the five weeks of recess.

Republicans plan to blitz the districts of vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in August with advertisements attacking “socialised healthcare”.

On Wednesday John Boehner, the Republican House leader, said: “One of the reasons the Democrats are pushing so hard before the leave is they know that if this bill hangs out there for the August recess, it will be shredded and when they get back there will be nothing.”

A Gallup poll released on Wednesday showed a deep ambivalence among Americans over the merits of healthcare reform with just 44 per cent saying the proposed reforms would improve medical care in the US and only 26 per cent believing it would improve their personal care. Barely a fifth said it would expand their own access to medical care.

“We are going to have the mother of all August recesses,” said Bill Galston, a scholar at Brookings who was involved with the last attempt at healthcare reform in 1993 under the Clinton administration.

“There is going to be a huge battle at the grassroots for the soul of the American voter and it’s not clear which way it will go,” he said.