Health Care

[Virgina] Senate passes bill saying Virginians don’t have to buy health insurance

Written By: JEFF E. SCHAPIRO

With five Democrats defecting, the Virginia Senate today passed a Republican measure that says Virginians don’t have to buy health insurance.

Voting 23-17, the Democratic-controlled Senate kicked to the House a bill by Sen. Frederick Quayle, R-Suffolk, that supporters say will send a message to Washington about its efforts to overhaul the health-care system.

The Quayle bill was the first of three nearly identical proposals by Republicans. The others are carried by Sens. Stephen Martin of Chesterfield and Jill Vogel of Fauquier. They passed by the same margin as the Quayle bill.

Quayle said the legislation is important, because it’s a way of telling Congress that Virginians believe the federal goverrnment is overstepping its authority.

If Washington can mandate health insurance, Quayle said, it could also require Americans to buy domestic automobiles as a way to help that ailing industry.

“They could have just ordered us to go out and buy a car — and just give us the cash to do it,” said Quayle, rather than set up the so-called cash-for-clunkers program.

Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax, said the Republican proposal is a “brochure bill,” intended by the GOP as ammunition in the 2011 General Assembly elections.

And Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, the defeated Democratic candidate for governor in 2009, said the legislature has more important business than playing politics with health care through a debate on where federal power ends and state authority begins.

Lawmakers, he said, should be more concerned about the aftershocks of the recession and closing the $4.2 billion hole in the Virginia budget.

“And now we’re arguing about theory,” said Deeds.

The five Democrats joining Republicans in this afternoon’s vote were: Charles Colgan of Prince William, R. Edward Houck of Spotsylvania, John Miller of Newport News, Philip Puckett of Russell and Roscoe Reynolds of Henry.

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Pelosi Pushes $300 Billion ‘Fix’ to Senate Health Care Bill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing a $300 billion “fix” to the Senate health care bill, saying that her chamber could approve the Senate’s package if those changes are made first.

Senior Democratic aides told Fox News that Pelosi has offered up the new package of changes to Senate Democratic leaders, with the hope that they will be able to pass it using a controversial procedural maneuver known as “reconciliation.” The maneuver would allow Democrats to pass the measure with just 51 votes, without having to first overcome the normal 60-vote threshold.

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Senate Dem: Health care bill ‘on life support’

If Obama and Democrats fail to pass any legislation this election year, Washington would still face the problem of millions of uninsured, rising medical costs and a dwindling Medicare trust fund forecast to run out of money in 2017.

Obama’s health care overhaul is “on life support,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., “but it still has a pulse.”

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A Year’s Worth of Obama Health Care Predictions

Obama: I will continue to fight for you by trying to pass a bill you despise

Tragicomedy from today’s “permanent campaign” stop in Ohio: “This is not about me!” saith The One, before launching into the salute to his own political fortitude that you’re about to see. Which, in fairness, is all he has left. No one likes the bill, it’s killing him with independents, but he’s invested too much political capital in it to end up with absolutely nothing. So he’ll end up with a hugely pared-down bill, a.k.a. almost absolutely nothing, and then tout it as some grand accomplishment that he’ll build on later even though everyone knows that he won’t. Remember, the goal, practically from day one, was simply to pass something, and that’s exactly what they’re going to get. “Something.”

See Video of Speech Here

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Dem health care talks collapsing

Health care reform teetered on the brink of collapse Thursday as House and Senate leaders struggled to coalesce around a strategy to rescue the plan, in the face of growing pessimism among lawmakers that the president’s top priority can survive.

The legislative landscape was filled with obstacles: House Democrats won’t pass the Senate bill. Senate Democrats don’t want to start from scratch just to appease the House. And the White House still isn’t telling Congress how to fix the problem.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) both tried to put a good face on the obvious chaos on Thursday, promising to press on.

“We have to get a bill passed,” Pelosi told reporters. “We know that.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said, “No way is it dead, because it’s so important for the country. And we will find a way to pass [it].”

But for the first time in the yearlong push, Democratic aides — and even some members — finally acknowledged privately that the fear of failure was real. And Congress recessed for the weekend without an obvious path forward as rank-and-file Democrats started splintering in different directions.

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