Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
I don’t take Peter DeFazio’s carping about the health care bill entirely seriously. But his substantive argument – that Democratic leaders took out a Medicare reimbursement measure that would have changed geographic disparities – could shift other members of the caucus:
“Unless they put that back in, I can’t support it,” Defazio said, referring to the medicare disparity fix. “This is under active discussion. They just decided yesterday morning they’re stripping this out. The senate budget committee staff deliberated for 20 minutes and it was out and our leadership was going to accept that. But a number of us involved in the quality health care coalition said that’s unacceptable and we’re not going to support the bill unless you fix this.”
The Medicare disparity fix seeks to normalize reimbursement rates across regions. It was particularly important to people in rural areas, whose doctors don’t receive as much money in reimbursement. My assumption would be that budget-counters determined that it cost too much to include in the reconciliation bill, although the Byrd rule was also flagged as a possibility.
But if you look at who’s remaining in the whip count, a lot of those members come from rural areas. If DeFazio doesn’t carry through on his threat, those other members – who are needed to pass the bill – might.
UPDATE: As expected, DeFazio has company on this, including Reps. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Ron Kind (D-WI). Medicare reimbursement has been a key issue throughout this process. Caucus Chair John Larson says:
“Several members have expressed concerns,” Larson said. We’re continuing to meet on that and if we can’t fix it because of parliamentary procedure, we believe that there are ways to fix it in other legislation.”
So they’re asking for a leap of faith.
Tags: Health care, House of Representatives, Medicare, Peter DeFazio, reimbursement rates, whip counts
