Modern News

By John Whitesides and Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House cranked up its push for a quick healthcare vote in the Congress on Thursday, criticizing rising health insurance premiums at a meeting with top industry executives and wooing lawmakers.

After the White House session attended by President Barack Obama and five of the country’s top health insurers, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Obama criticized the industry’s “jaw-dropping” rate hikes.

“The meeting was really focused on what is happening with the kind of jaw-dropping rate increases that people are seeing,” Sebelius said, calling on insurers to be more transparent and to file requests for rate increases online.

The day after Obama launched a last-ditch drive to pass a sweeping healthcare overhaul, he also summoned groups of liberal and moderate Democrats in the House of Representatives to meetings at the White House to seek their support.

House Democratic leaders said they were confident they could win the 216 votes needed to pass the Senate-approved health bill even though about a dozen abortion rights opponents — including some who voted for the bill in November — say they would be willing to oppose it.

“Every legislative vote is a heavy lift around here. You assume nothing,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters. “We will pass a bill.”

Obama renewed his drive for a healthcare overhaul on Wednesday, forging ahead with a revamp of the $2.5 trillion healthcare system designed to cut costs, regulate insurers and expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans.

The overhaul looked dead in its tracks in January when Republicans deprived Democrats of their crucial 60th Senate vote by winning a Massachusetts special election, stopping negotiations to merge the House and Senate-passed bills into a final product for Obama to sign.

Obama and congressional Democrats are rallying for a last make-or-break attempt, and House Democrats hope approve the Senate-passed bill within the next few weeks.

The new healthcare push and White House meeting drove down health insurer shares in afternoon trading. The Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payor index was down about 1 percent and the S&P Managed Health Care index was off 2 percent.

‘REFORM UP, STOCKS DOWN’

“The prospects of healthcare reform are up. Stocks are down,” said Tim Nelson, a healthcare analyst with First American Funds. “These stocks go up and down with the prospects of healthcare reform.”

At the White House, Sebelius met with the CEOs — Aetna Inc’s Ronald Williams, Cigna Corp’s David Cordani, UnitedHealth Group Inc’s Stephen Hemsley and WellPoint Inc’s Angela Braly — to press them to justify premium increases.

Obama dropped into the meeting to hand the executives a letter from an Ohio woman whose insurance premium is set to go up 40 percent, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Insurers have said they must raise rates to cover skyrocketing healthcare costs at a time when more people are dropping coverage amid a sour economy. Aetna’s Williams said the companies “recognize that there are issues, particularly in the individual insurance market, that need to be addressed.”

Obama planned to meet 11 liberal House members and seven moderate House members at the White House as Congress steams toward a mid-March vote on his sweeping overhaul.

The biggest question remains whether the House can pass the Senate bill. There is little margin for error — the House passed its version of the bill in November with only three votes to spare.

House Democrats have been unhappy with provisions in the Senate bill, and Obama offered changes to ease those concerns in the last few weeks. They include watering down a tax on expensive insurance plans and boosting federal subsidies.

Those fixes to the Senate bill will be passed separately by the House and Senate through a process called reconciliation that allows a simple majority vote in the 100-member Senate rather than the 60 votes needed to clear Republican procedural hurdles.

That approach, which can be used only for budget-related measures, would bypass rules that require 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles in the 100-member Senate. Reconciliation needs only a simple Senate majority of 51 votes.

But reconciliation cannot be used to change the Senate provision that weakened language banning the use of federal funds for abortion, and as a result Democratic Representative Bart Stupak said he would vote against the bill — and he said as many as a dozen other Democrats might too.

“Yes. We’re prepared to take responsibility” for killing the healthcare bill, Stupak said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program. “Let’s face it. I want to see healthcare. But we’re not going to bypass the principles of belief that we feel strongly about.”

Democrats disputed the idea that Stupak’s group could bring down the bill, and said others who voted against it would change their minds this time.

“We haven’t done a formal whip count, but I don’t think those 10 or 11 votes kills the bill,” Democratic Representative Diana DeGette told reporters after a morning meeting of House Democrats.

Pelosi said the Senate bill, even with changes sought by Obama, was smaller than the original House bill. “For some of our members who voted no, it has an appeal,” Pelosi said.

(Additional reporting by Donna Smith, Thomas Ferraro, Tabassum Zakaria, Lewis Krauskopf, David Morgan, Patricia Zengerle; editing by David Alexander and Vicki Allen)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A dozen House of Representatives Democrats opposed to abortion are willing to kill President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plan unless it satisfies their demand for language barring the procedure, Representative Bart Stupak said on Thursday.

“Yes. We’re prepared to take responsibility,” Stupak said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when asked if he and his 11 Democratic allies were willing to accept the consequences for bringing down healthcare reform over abortion.

“Let’s face it. I want to see healthcare. But we’re not going to bypass the principles of belief that we feel strongly about,” he said.

The Michigan Democrat held up House legislation last year until he was satisfied that its language prevented federal tax dollars from being used to fund abortions.

No specific legislation has yet surfaced. But Obama began a final push for reform on Wednesday, urging Congress to vote on the plan in the next few weeks even if it means passing the measure with a narrow Democratic majority and no Republican support.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s top adviser on health issues, said the White House was prepared to bar the use of federal money for abortion. “This will not change the status quo on the policy of abortion. There will be no federal funding for abortion,” she told the same television program.

But Stupak said anti-abortion lawmakers are worried that the legislative language will follow the blueprint of the reform bill passed by the Senate, which he said does not provide sufficient safeguards.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Sander Levin will take over as chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee to replace Charles Rangel, who stepped aside under an ethics cloud, a committee spokesman said on Thursday.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the appointment at a closed door caucus meeting, the spokesman said. Democratic Rep. Pete Stark of California had been in line for the post based on seniority. But a Democratic lawmaker said he chose instead to remain chairman of the panel’s health subcommittee.

Like Rangel, Levin is viewed as a liberal Democrat.

Rangel temporarily stepped aside as Ways and Means chairman

on Wednesday after a House ethics panel admonished him last week for taking corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008 in violation of the chamber’s gift rules.

The panel, composed of three Democrats and three Republicans, is still looking into other matters involving Rangel, including his use of a rent-controlled apartment and his fund-raising for the Charles Rangel Center for Public Service in New York.

(Reporting by Donna Smith and Thomas Ferraro; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A small group of U.S. lawmakers planned to offer legislation Thursday to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement in the latest sign of congressional disillusionment with free-trade deals.

The bill spearheaded by Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, would require President Barack Obama to give Mexico and Canada six months notice that the United States will no longer be part of 16-year-old trade pact.

The move comes as Obama says he wants to resolve problems blocking congressional approval of long-delayed trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. The strongest opposition to those agreements comes from Obama’s fellow Democrats.

The United States also will begin talks later this month with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Chile, Peru, Vietnam and Brunei on a regional free-trade agreement in Asia Pacific.

Taylor blames NAFTA for a loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs that he believes threatens national security, a spokesman for the conservative 10-term congressman said.

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By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday underscored mounting concerns about the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, and scheduled a separate hearing next week to dig deeper into projected cost overruns and schedule delays.

The committee’s chairman, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said the hearing was needed, given recent revelations of troubles with the system design and demonstration phase, the Pentagon’s decision to fire the F-35 program manager, news of delayed fielding of the fighters and expected cost overruns.

“There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered,” Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the committee said, noting that just a month ago Defense Secretary Robert Gates had told lawmakers he did not expect delays in when the services could start using the new fighters in combat.

McCain, who requested next week’s hearing, said he remained concerned about the ability of the F-35 test program to detect and anticipate problems, how effectively software risk will be managed going forward, and the reliability of flight testing and production schedules.

McCain criticized the “piecemeal process” by which the Pentagon had been assessing risk on the F-35 program, and said the committee had not been adequately informed about emerging issues, which made proper congressional oversight difficult.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will come out with a new book that is a “celebration of American virtues and strengths,” publisher HarperCollins announced on Thursday.

The as-yet untitled book by Palin, widely considered to be weighing a run for U.S. president, will feature selections of readings that have inspired her and portraits of people she admires, the publisher said.

“She will also draw from her personal experience to amplify these timely (and timeless) themes,” HarperCollins said in a statement.

Palin’s first book, “Going Rogue,” has sold more than 2.2 million copies, HarperCollins said.

Palin ran unsuccessfully for vice president on the Republican ticket with presidential nominee Sen. John McCain in 2008. She was governor of Alaska at the time.

Since then, Palin resigned as governor and has made public appearances before such groups as the conservative “Tea Party” movement and on NBC television’s “Tonight Show.”

She also has been hired as a commentator on Fox News, where she recently said she was open to a possible White House run in 2012 but had not made up her mind.

The publisher, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire, did not disclose the amount of Palin’s advance for the new book.

(Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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