Debate Over Health Care Gets More Intense

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

MADELEINE BRAND, host:

And I'm Madeleine Brand.

We begin this hour with the debate of over health care. It's getting more intense. President Obama is taking his argument for health care overhaul to the American people this week. It dominated his news conference last night. And today, the president hosted a health care town hall in Cleveland. Back in Washington though the fate an overhaul is as uncertain as ever. We've asked NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner to come in and help us sort all this out. And Julie, the president, just this afternoon, he acknowledged, conceded really, what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said earlier today, that there will be no vote on health care before the August recess. Does that surprise you?

JULIE ROVNER: No, this is really just a formal recognition of the reality of the situation. The Senate only has two more weeks before it leaves for its recess, that's not nearly enough time to get this off the Senate floor, and frankly only one of the two Senate committees has completed its work. The Finance Committee, the committee with really most of the jurisdiction over this issue, is and has been huddled behind closed doors for more than a month now trying to hammer out a bipartisan compromise. They say they're making progress and I take them at their word. I don't think they'd be meeting everyday if they weren't making some progress, but they're not finished yet. Now, something else that Senator Reid did say today is, that while the Senate isn't going to finish its work before the August recess, he does want the Finance Committee to finish its work. So they have two more weeks and I think everybody expects that that's probably doable.

BRAND: Okay, let's look at the House now. That was one on a faster track it seemed to getting its bill voted on, but it doesn't seem that that's going to happen soon either.

ROVNER: Well, that's right. As of now it's not clear what the state of things are in the House. There's three committees working on a bill there, two have finished. The third is stuck because there's enough of those conservative, so-called Blue Dog Democrats to block a vote. Now technically the House doesn't have to wait for that third committee, and there was apparently a very contentious meeting of House Democratic leaders this morning. Here's how Speaker Nancy Pelosi described it at her weekly news conference.

Representative Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California; Speaker of the House): I've invited the views of members in terms of some of the issues and the timing as we go forward. And it was pretty exciting, but there was definitely a sentiment in the meeting that members wanted to get this done before the break.

BRAND: And Julie, why wouldn't the House want to vote before the recess?

ROVNER: Well, it's a risk. They've got this big tax increase in the bill for the families who earn more than $350,000 a year. They may not want to vote for it, the Senate ended up doing something completely different and that tax doesn't end up in the bill. On the other hand, when Congress leaves town for five weeks in the summer, it creates this vacuum that lets opponents of various pieces of legislation nibble away at it. When they come back it's always harder to put things together.

BRAND: Mm-hmm. Well, let's look again at the news conference last night. A lot of people said that this was the president's pivotal moment, that he needed to convince people to support this. Did he do that?

ROVNER: Well, he certainly tried to do that. I think there's a couple of places where the president may have sort of misstated a few things. There was one place, where he said that he wasn't going to let it add to the deficit. Here's what he said.

President BARACK OBAMA: I've also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it.

BRAND: Julie, little fact checking here, any place where he overstated his case?

ROVNER: Well, I think that was the place. And I think, you know, there's about $250 billion in the bill that would go to help doctors not take a 20 percent pay cut next year. The administration says it's not going to count that towards the - towards how much the bill costs, the congressional budget office begs to disagree. They said that money is being spent. So, there's a distinction about whether or not you think that adds to the deficit or not. I guess it's people's call to make on their own.

BRAND: NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner. Julie, thank you.

ROVNER: You're very welcome.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

MADELEINE BRAND, host:

And I'm Madeleine Brand.

We begin this hour with the debate over health care. It's getting more intense. President Obama is taking his argument for health care overhaul to the American people this week. It dominated his news conference last night. And today, the president hosted a health care town hall in Cleveland. Back in Washington, though, the fate of an overhaul is as uncertain as ever.

We've asked NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner to come in and help sort all these things out for us. And let's begin, Julie, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He said his chamber definitely will not be voting on health care before it leaves for the August recess. And President Obama now concedes that he won't have that bill on his desk before the break. Is this a surprise?

JULIE ROVNER: Well, hardly a surprise - I would more call it a formal recognition of reality. There's two Senate committees working on this, one of them is finished. But the really important committee in the Senate, the Finance Committee, is and has been huddled behind closed doors for more than a month now trying to hammer out a bipartisan compromise. They say they're making progress, which is probably true or else they wouldn't be still meeting everyday. Senator Reid does say he wants the Finance Committee to finish its work before the August recess - that's two weeks from tomorrow. I believe that part is probably doable.

BRAND: Okay, let's go to the House now. That seemed to be on a faster track in getting its bill voted on, but now not so much?

ROVNER: Not so much. As of now, it's not at all clear what the state of things are in the House. There's three committees there working on a bill, two are done. The third is stuck because there's enough conservative, so-called Blue Dog Democrats to block a vote. Now, technically, the House doesn't have to wait for that third committee, and there was apparently a very contentious meeting of House Democratic leaders this morning. Here's how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described it at her weekly news conference.

Representative Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California, Speaker of the House): I've invited the views of members, in terms of some of the issues and the timing as we go forward, and it was pretty exciting. But there was definitely a sentiment in the meeting that members wanted to get this done before the break.

BRAND: Julie, why wouldn't the House want to vote before the break?

ROVNER: Well, there's a calculated risk here. There's a big tax increase in the bill for high income people - House may not want to vote for that if the Senate ends up doing something completely different. On the other hand, if the House doesn't vote, it doesn't look very good from a momentum point of view. That's what the president's been saying about why he set these deadlines in the first place, because the default setting for Congress is inertia. And there's some truth to that.

BRAND: Okay. Well, let's talk about fact-checking and go back to the president's news conference for a moment. Any place there that he overstated his case, Julie?

ROVNER: Well, there's one place in particular where the president's kind of trying to have in both ways. Here's what he said about a health bill and its impact on the deficit.

President BARACK OBAMA: I've also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it.

BRAND: Julie, I've heard that a lot lately. Is it not the case?

ROVNER: Well, I guess it depends on how you define deficit and how define health insurance reform: turns out there's $245 billion in that bill to help avoid a 20 percent cut for doctors on Medicare next year. Now, the administration says that they're calling that already baked in, that that was going to happen anyway, so it shouldn't be counted as part of this whole reform plan. On the other hand, that was really what helped get the American Medical Association's endorsement for the bill. So, if it hadn't been in this bill, the AMA might well not have endorsed it. So, it certainly does add to the deficit according to the congressional budget office. It may not add to the deficit according to the administration, or according to the conservative Blue Dogs, who agreed to let them add it in. So, you get to judge whether you think it adds to the deficit or not. But the president said he's not going to count it.

BRAND: Okay. NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner, thanks.

ROVNER: You're very welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.