http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/17/AR2009101701810.html?referrer=facebookThree months before he was elected president, Barack Obama vowed not only to reform health care but also to pass the legislation in an unprecedented way.
"I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table," he said at an appearance in Chester, Va., repeating an assertion he made many times. He said the discussions would be "televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies."
But now, as a Senate vote on health-care legislation nears, those negotiations are occurring in a setting that is anything but revolutionary in Washington: Three senators are working on the bill behind closed doors.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) sits at the head of a wooden table at his office as he and Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) work to merge two competing versions of health-care legislation into one bill. The three men will be joined by top aides as well as by members of President Obama's health-care team, led by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The sessions started on Wednesday and could be completed this week.
The group will make such key decisions as whether to include a government-run insurance plan designed to compete with private insurance companies. The bill passed in July by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which Dodd led while Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) was ailing, included such a provision, but the legislation passed last week by Baucus's Finance Committee did not.
The bills also differ on how much Americans who do not buy insurance should be fined as the government seeks to get everyone covered.
In the sessions, Dodd in effect represents advocates of the government-insurance option and Baucus represents those less committed to that proposal. The tie-breaking votes are likely to be Reid and, on Obama's behalf, Emanuel. Obama and Reid have said they personally back the government-insurance option but have not ruled out supporting a bill that lacks such a provision.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/17/AR2009101701810.html?referrer=facebook