WASHINGTON - In a coup for House Democrats, AARP will endorse sweeping health care overhaul legislation headed for a history-making floor vote, officials told the Associated Press yesterday.
An announcement from the 40-million-member group is expected today, said officials with knowledge of the group’s decision. Backing the 10-year, $1.2 trillion House bill is a tricky move for AARP. Many retirees are concerned about cuts in Medicare payments to medical providers, which will be used to finance an expansion of health insurance coverage to millions of working families who now lack it.
Floor votes on the House bill could come as early as this weekend. President Obama plans to visit Capitol Hill tomorrow, congressional officials said. Yesterday, House leaders moved to shore up support for the measure among the Democratic rank-and-file, even as they sharpened their fight with the health insurance industry.
Last-minute changes to the legislation, released late Tuesday night, started a 72-hour legislative clock and cleared the way for votes as early as Saturday.
In a move aimed at health insurance companies, the revised House bill would launch a federal-state crackdown on what it terms “unjustified premium increases.’’ The federal Health and Human Services department would monitor patterns of premium increases, and could take action if the price hikes are out of line. The bill would also provide $1 billion to state insurance commissioners, allowing them to ramp up their own monitoring and enforcement.
Democrat John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said yesterday they would work in conjunction with the White House to patch together a bill that could pass the Senate.
Graham, who has come under fire in his home state for his support of action on climate change, said working on legislation was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’’ to solve two problems: heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution and the country’s dependence on foreign sources of fuel.
The announcement came as a key Senate panel for a second straight day delayed voting on any changes to a climate and energy bill introduced in late September by Kerry and Democrat Barbara Boxer of California because no Republicans showed up.
Republican lawmakers are demanding a more thorough economic analysis of the measure, which would reduce heat-trapping gases by 83 percent by 2050, saying it will raise energy prices and cause job losses.
Obama tried to turn attention to his education agenda, an area in which he has made significant progress. While the president said his first obligation was bringing the US economy back from the brink of collapse, he added that long-term economic success can only be achieved by making investments in education. “There is nothing that will determine the quality of our future as a nation or the lives of our children more than the kind of education we provide them,’’ Obama said at a middle school, a day before state lawmakers here planned to vote to lift a ban on using student test scores to judge teacher performance.
