LIHU‘E — Some Democrats in Washington, D.C. are signaling a retreat on health care reform, and some are looking for various ways forward, but Congresswoman Mazie Hirono has ruled out one approach. Asked Friday where her vote would fall should
LIHU‘E — Some Democrats in Washington, D.C. are signaling a retreat on health care reform, and some are looking for various ways forward, but Congresswoman Mazie Hirono has ruled out one approach.
Asked Friday where her vote would fall should House leadership decide to move forward with the U.S. Senate’s version of the bill, Hirono said simply, “I would vote against it.”
“We’re looking at the Senate bill and we believe that it’s not just a deal of 60 votes or 51 votes in the Senate, but 218 votes in the House as well,” Hirono said. “There are too many parts to the senate bill that I couldn’t agree with.”
House Democrats, who passed their own reform bill late last year before the Senate passed its version on Christmas Eve, have criticized the Senate version as being watered down. Hirono said the Senate’s proposed tax on expensive health care plans would “hit the middle class” and “is not a good approach I’d like to see pay for health care reform.”
“They don’t go far enough as far as putting some accountability on the private insurance companies. They don’t close the (Medicare Part D) donut hole,” she said, calling the sweetheart deal offered to centrist Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson in exchange for his vote “totally unacceptable.”
In recent days, other liberal representatives said they would not vote for the Senate bill, which has emerged as one of the potential approaches in the wake of Massachusetts State Sen. Scott Brown’s surprising victory Tuesday to claim the U.S. Senate seat long held by late “liberal lion” Ted Kennedy.
The switch leaves Democrats with 59 votes, enough to pass legislation but not enough to prevent Republican stall tactics. To avoid another showdown vote in the Senate, the House could simply approve the Senate’s bill as currently written — without so much as adding a comma — and send it to President Barack Obama for approval.
Smaller amendments could be added through a budget reconciliation process that requires just a bare majority, but politicians on both sides of the aisle have seemed reluctant to go that route.
Other potential scenarios involve passing small portions of the bill piecemeal, or simply backing down.
“I’d like to continue to move the ball on health care reform,” Hirono said, noting that eliminating discrimination based on pre-existing conditions or gender, closing the Medicare donut hole and reviewing private insurance rates by looking at how much companies spend on administrative costs, including salaries, would be necessities for her to be on board, whether it be with one large bill or multiple smaller ones.
Hirono said congressional Democrats are currently working on strategy as well as substance and are waiting for Obama to weigh in. The State of the Union address is scheduled for Wednesday evening in Washington.
“We know that we have to do something about health care to cover more people, because the rest of us really are paying for the uninsured people in this country,” Hirono said. “We pay more for health care than any other advanced country in the world and were something like No. 37 in terms of outcome.
“We cannot sustain these types of costs to our economy,” she said.
• Michael Levine, assistant news editor, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or mlevine@kauaipubco.com.
