Health Care Repeal Dies In The Senate

It didn't take long for the "gentleman's agreement" between Senate party leaders to die a rather unnatural death -- which is appropriate I Guess, since the agreement itself was pretty unnatural. It died because the Democrats were refusing to consider the House bill to repeal the new health care reform law passed last year, and the Republicans were determined to vote on the matter come hell or high water.

So Minority Leader McConnell took the House bill and tried to tack it on to a Senate bill as an amendment. The Senate bill, the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act, had nothing at all to do with health care in any way, but that didn't matter to Republicans. They would get their vote on the repeal of health care, even if they had to do it as a non-germane amendment to another bill.

Majority Leader Reid allowed the vote to happen, even though the amendment was not germane to the bill it was trying to amend. He did however, point out that it violated Senate rules that said an amendment could not negatively affect the budget (and since the CBO had said the health care bill would cut the deficit, repealing it would add to the deficit). This meant the amendment would have to be approved by at least 60 senators to pass.

It turned out that the 60-vote rule was not needed. The health care repeal amendment did not get even 50 votes. It failed on a vote of 47 to 51. It turned out to be a strictly party-line vote. All Republicans in the Senate voted for the repeal [including such moderates as Snowe (Maine), Brown (Massachusetts) and Collins (Maine)]. Fifty Democrats voted against the repeal, and Independent Sen. Sanders (Vermont) joined the Democrats. Two senators did not vote -- Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and Warner (D-Virginia).

Of course, the whole thing was just an exercise in politics. The Republicans never had a chance of getting 60 votes (even if some "blue dogs" had voted with them). The Republicans think this will make a good campaign issue in 2012. I think the overestimate the number of people who want the bill repealed. Although a small majority is unhappy with the bill, a significant part of those are unhappy because they think the bill didn't go far enough -- not because it went too far.

I am one of those who was not happy with the bill. I wanted a public option for insurance to be offered. But the bill is much better than nothing. At least it ends denying insurance because of "pre-existing conditions", lets young people stay on a parent's insurance until they are 26, removes the lifetime cap of benefits, mandates at least 80% of premiums go to pay patient benefits (rather than company overhead or profits), and will eventually extend coverage to an additional 32 million Americans. Those are good things, and maybe someday the bill can be amended to accomplish even more (like putting doctors back in charge of patient care instead of insurance companies).

In contrast, the Republicans had no health care reform to offer. The best they could say was that they would "start the process over". Translated into real English, that means any reform would be delayed for many years. I think most people are smart enough to see that, and hopefully they will punish the Republicans for it in 2012.

There was one alteration to the health care law that was approved by the Senate. On an 81 to 17 vote, the Senate eliminated the need for businesses to file a form 1099 when a payment of $600 or more was made. This removes some of the paperwork requirements of the health care law.