House Dems Move to Votes on Health Bill

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Source: Associated Press

House Dems move to votes on health bill

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 31 mins ago
WASHINGTON – House Democrats are preparing to advance legislation that would deliver on President Barack Obama's promise to remake the nation's costly health care system and cover some 50 million uninsured. On the heels of the Senate health committee's approval Wednesday of a plan to revamp U.S. health care, three House committees with jurisdiction over the issue were shifting into action.

Votes were planned Thursday in the Education and Labor and Ways and Means committees on a $1.5 trillion plan that majority House Democrats presented this week. The legislation seeks to provide coverage to nearly all Americans by subsidizing the poor and penalizing individuals and employers who don't purchase health insurance.

A third House committee, Energy and Commerce, also was considering the measure Thursday, but the road was expected to be rougher there. A group of fiscally conservative House Democrats called the Blue Dogs holds more than half-a-dozen seats on the committee — enough to block approval — and is opposing the bill over costs and other issues. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., who chairs the Blue Dogs' health care task force, said the group would need to see significant changes to protect small businesses and rural providers and contain costs before it could sign on. "We cannot support the current bill," he said.

Obama was doing all he could to encourage Congress to act. He scheduled White House meetings for Thursday morning with two potential Senate swing votes, Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. On Wednesday he met with a group of Senate Republicans in the White House in search of a bipartisan compromise and appeared in the Rose Garden for the latest in a daily series of public appeals to Congress to "step up and meet our responsibilities" and move legislation this summer.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_overhaul