Senators air doubts on health care proposal
Published 9:50 pm Sunday, June 21, 2009
WASHINGTON — A Republican senator seeking a bipartisan health deal spoke Sunday of “dialing down” expectations while one of President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies questioned whether the White House had the votes necessary for a such a costly and comprehensive plan.
Obama’s proposal to provide health insurance for about 50 million Americans who lack it has become a contentious point for a Democratic-controlled House and Senate struggling to reach a consensus.
Much of the concern came after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the plan would cost $1 trillion over 10 years but cover only about one-third of those now lacking health insurance.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said officials would have to rethink their best-case scenario for providing a sweeping overhaul of the health care system at a relatively low price.
“So we’re in the position of dialing down some of our expectations to get the costs down so that it’s affordable and, most importantly, so that it’s paid for because we can’t go to the point where we are now of not paying for something when we have trillions of dollars of debt,” said Grassley, R-Iowa.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she wasn’t certain there are enough votes among Democrats to support the proposal.
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the bill’s cost was problematic.
“You do the math,” McCain said. “It comes up to $3 trillion. And so far, we have no proposal for having to pay for it.”
Graham said: “We do need to deal with inflation in health care, private and public inflation, but we’re not going to go down to the government-owning-health-care road in America … There’s been a bipartisan rejection of that.”
