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Fierce GOP Opposition Slows Senate's First Healthcare Votes


December 1, 2009
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Senate Democrats, facing stiff Republican opposition, were forced Tuesday to delay votes on the first set of amendments to the gargantuan healthcare bill – underscoring the fiercely partisan nature of the floor debate and threatening Democrats' tight timeline for achieving final passage.

Party leaders, scrambling to pass a bill by Christmas, had hoped to be able to approve a proposal Tuesday designed to expand women's access to preventive services such as mammograms, a provision favored by leading advocacy groups for cancer patients.

But instead, lawmakers spent much of the day tussling over the healthcare bill's potential impact on the 44-year-old federal Medicare program for seniors, a debate that has shadowed the healthcare legislation for months.

Democratic leaders are proposing to offset the cost of expanding coverage to some 31 million people over the next decade in part by cutting future Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers.

Insurance companies that contract with the federal government to provide Medicare Advantage plans with extra benefits to about one in four Medicare beneficiaries also face major cuts, which could prompt some insurers to drop their plans.

Many healthcare policy experts believe cuts are necessary to make the nation's healthcare system more efficient and to provide incentives for higher quality care--critical goals if the Medicare program is to remain solvent. Without changes, Medicare's main fund is slated to run of money in 2017.

The Senate healthcare bill has also won praise from independent groups such as the AARP, the nation's leading advocate for seniors, which has been working to reassure its members that healthcare legislation does not jeopardize their Medicare benefits.

Yet many seniors remain nervous about a health overhaul, and Republicans took to the Senate floor all day Tuesday to renew their claims that the cuts would harm seniors.

"How many times have you heard from senior citizens in your state saying, 'I paid into this trust fund. I paid for my Medicare all my life. Now it's going to be cut. How is that fair? How is that fair to my generation, the greatest generation?,'" Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked.

McCain pushed to send the healthcare bill back to committee with instructions to restore more than $400 billion in proposed cuts in federal healthcare spending over the next decade, much of it in Medicare.

The GOP charges infuriated Democrats, who pointed out that many Republicans have voted for even deeper cuts to Medicare spending in the past. When McCain was running for president, his top aide talked of trimming Medicare spending to fund new tax credits to help Americans buy health benefits.

"Talk about crocodile tears," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said on the Senate floor Tuesday. "Was it not Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, leader of the Republican revolution, that said he wanted Medicare to, quote , "wither on the vine?" Was it not Senator Bob Dole, the (Republican) standard-bearer for president in the 1990's, who said he had fought against Medicare and was proud he voted against it?"

Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, a centrist from Maine who objects to portions of Reid's bill, also took issue Tuesday with the allegations that the legislation would hurt Medicare beneficiaries.

"There are going to be a lot of rewards for seniors in this and no reductions in their benefits," Snowe said. "Ultimately, it buoys the system overall in the future."
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