Key Committee Backs Better-Than-Expected Health Plan

Key Committee Backs Better-Than-Expected Health Plan

posted by John Nichols

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday evening voted 31-28 for a health-care reform plan that uses a relatively robust "public option" and other strategies to insure the nearly 50 million Americans who currently lack health-care coverage.

The plan, which would cost $1 trillion over ten years, would be financed by controlling Medicare and Medicaid costs and by taxing businesses and the wealthiest Americans.

With the House breaking for its August recess, the roughly 1,000-page Energy and Commerce plan will become an improtant focus of an intense month of grassroots campaigning for reform and high-stakes lobbying against it.

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In the end, however, five Democrats still voted with the committee's 23 Republicans to block the measure, which includes a relatively robust public option. The Democrats who voted with the "party of no" were all conservatives or moderates who thought the measure was too progressive: Representatives Rick Boucher of Virginia, Bart Stupak of Michigan, Jim Matheson of Utah, John Barrow of Georgia and Charles Melancon of Louisiana.

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