This Week in Health Insurance Reform--Federal Legislative Overview

February 3, 2010 EasyToInsureME Ez2InsureME

House and Senate
House
and Senate Democratic leaders remain at an impasse on merging their
respective health care reform bills. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-NV) stated that they will not move forward on any health care reform
measures before Republican Scott Brown is sworn in as Massachusetts’
junior senator.

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Both
party leaders decided to wait and hear what President Obama was going
to say about health reform in his first State of the Union Address on
January 27. In it, he urged Congress to continue its work on health
care reform and outlined his agenda that focused heavily on reviving
the economy to boost employment and reduce the budget deficit.

In
an excerpt on health care reform from President Obama’s speech, he
states, “Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have
insurance to keep their doctor and their plan. It would reduce costs
and premiums for millions of families and businesses. And according to
the Congressional Budget Office – the independent organization that
both parties have cited as the official scorekeeper for Congress – our
approach would bring down the deficit by as much as $1 trillion over
the next two decades.”

The Republican response was given by
newly-elected Governor Bob McDonnell at the Virginia State House. In an
excerpt from his speech, McDonnell stated that “All Americans agree -
we need a health care system that is affordable, accessible, and high
quality. But most Americans do not want to turn over the best medical
care system in the world to the federal government. Republicans in
Congress have offered legislation to reform healthcare, without
shifting Medicaid costs to the states, without cutting Medicare, and
without raising your taxes.”

Health Care Reform Next Steps
Congressional
leaders continue to consider options for moving forward on health
reform legislation following President Obama’s State of the Union
address. Serious consideration is being given to taking action –
possibly as early as next week – on a number of narrowly focused bills,
some of which may be structured with the goal of attracting bi-partisan
support. Consideration of these bills is not intended to preclude
action on comprehensive health reform at a later date.

One of
the first bills likely to move to the House floor could be an antitrust
bill that would repeal portions of the McCarran-Ferguson Act pertaining
to health insurance issuers and medical malpractice issuers. This
legislation was proposed last year in the Senate by Senator Patrick
Leahy (D-VT) and in the House by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and is known
as the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2009. It
was ultimately included in the House health care reform bill, but not
in the Senate reform bill.

As we reported last week, one of
the potential options for Democrats to pass health care reform
legislation was to use the budget reconciliation process. Democratic
leaders are purportedly continuing to weigh a two-track process in
which the House would clear the Senate health bill and then the Senate
would use the filibuster-proof reconciliation process to incorporate a
series of compromises with the House. Senate Majority Leader Reid said
this week, “[Budget reconciliation is] something that we’re looking at,
very closely. That’s where a lot of the procedural problems come in.
It’s real tough to do it the right way, and we don’t know how to do
that yet.”

In the meantime, the House will continue to focus on
smaller health care bills. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
stated this week that her party will successfully complete their work
on health care reform that they began last year. Pelosi said, “We’ll go
through the gate. If the gate is closed, we’ll go over the fence. If
the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll
parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed for the
American people.”