Rep. Mazie Hirono: ‘We’re not there yet’

LIHU‘E — U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono said Thursday she was “glad” about the Senate’s passage of a health care bill, but said the vote was just the starting point for negotiations with a more progressive bill passed by the House that she supports.

“We’re not there yet,” Hirono, a Democrat representing the Neighbor Islands and rural O‘ahu, said Thursday afternoon in an exclusive interview with The Garden Island. “I haven’t seen the Senate bill, but from what I’ve read, there are areas of major differences.”

Hirono was among dozens of progressives in the House who earlier this year signed a letter warning that they would be unable to vote for legislation without a robust public option, but Hirono said the public option was just a means to an end: providing choice to Americans and accountability for insurance companies.

“If there’s any way possible that we can get a public option in there, that’s what I’d like, but the realities being what they are … It’s a huge bill with a lot of parts to it and I want to see what the parts are,” she said.

The Senate bill does not have a public option included in it, and some moderate Democratic senators have warned that if their bill is significantly changed during conference with the house, they will not vote for it again.

“The accountability piece that I thought the public option would encourage, we need to find other ways of doing it,” Hirono said. “One the principles we’re going to be looking for in any bill is how affordable will this be for the American people, middle class people.

“I’d like to be able to support a bill that is affordable, that covers 30 million more people, that is paid for, that doesn’t add to the deficit, so those are some of the elements that I’d be interested in having in any bill as we move forward,” she said.

• Michael Levine, assistant news editor, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or mlevine@kauaipubco.com.