White House Health Care Overhaul Facing More Hurdles in Congress

An ambitious plan to re-make the nation’s faltering health care system hit more roadblocks in Congress yesterday, as a cable of conservative House Democrats made demands for a variety of changes in the legislation that is being pushed quickly through Congress. According to 40 members of the "Blue Dog Coalition," the bill as it currently stands "lacks a number of elements essential to preserving what works and fixing what is broken." The group indicated that to garner their support, a bill would have to aggressively reduce the growth in health care costs.

In a letter sent to House Speak Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the Blue Dogs demanded protection for small businesses as well as providers of health care services in rural areas. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Arkansas, noted that he didn’t think a vote should take place until September, a timeframe that conflicts with Pelosi’s promise to President Obama. Said Pelosi, "I promised the president that we would have legislation out of the House before we went on an August break. That is still my goal."

There are a number of issues faced in both chambers of Congress over the mountains of minutiae that any bill will entail. Senate Democrats, for instance, maintain that additional taxes on health benefits may scuttle the plan if not removed. That and other concerns related to cost seem to be, predictably, the primary stumbling blocks thus far. Said Blue Dog Rep. Marion Berry, D-Arkansas, "We’ve just got a lot of questions and the top of the list would be how to pay for it." Amidst an economy that is facing a slow-recovering financial system, a suppressed real estate market, reduced wages, greater unemployment and already-massive government debt exploding in the midst of bailout plans that should be named for days of the week, the massive amounts of funding required for the plan will have to come from...somewhere.