Harkin: Health reform will be passed with or without Republicans

With the national health care summit called by the President Barack Obama now complete, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, remains confident that a health care reform bill will be passed by Congress, and adamant that it will be done with or without support from Republicans.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

Calling the health care summit “the final port of call” on the battle to enact reform, Harkin simply stated that “it is time to bring it home.”

“The other day a reporter asked me how close we were to that final harbor and I said that I could see it without binoculars,” Harkin told reporters Thursday.

The summit ended, according to Harkin, with Obama citing the urgency of passing legislation and laying out a short timetable for further input and discussion. He believes that action will be taken on reform in the next four to six weeks, following a brief time for additional compromises to be discussed.

“As I have said, we have bent over backwards the last year and a half to get Republican ideas, amendments, suggestions and now have held this summit today,” Harkin said. “So, I think the time has come. I think the ball is in the Republican’s court.”

The Republicans, he said, now need to come forward with their suggestions and how those should be further incorporated into the bill. Harkin was clear, though, that the bill will not be written again from scratch, as U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and other Republicans have suggested. Harkin was also quick to call out colleagues in Congress who seem unwilling to recognize and appreciate the compromises he believes are already present in the bill.

“I thought some Republicans made some very valid points — in terms of cost controls, in terms of non-duplication of medical services, getting medical services better coordinated among doctors, cutting out fraud and abuse — but we’ve got all of that in our bill,” Harkin said. “When they kept bringing up those suggestions, we kept pointing out that we have those in the bill. Now, it may not be 100 percent like you, Mr. [Tom] Coburn, wanted, but it is maybe 75 or 80 percent of what you wanted. Isn’t that the art of legislation to find compromise?”

Any health care reform passed by Congress must be comprehensive and not incremental, Harkin said, indicating that incremental improvements have been tried and have not worked. That being said, however, he also downplayed — although didn’t completely rule out — the possibility of a public option in the final bill.

“The House is pretty insistent on a public option. The Senate is a little bit more divided on it. I think in our negotiations with the House in the next week or so there may be some decisions made on that. I just don’t know which way it is going to go,” he said, adding that his personal belief is that the bill will likely not have a public option.

A new Research 2000 poll released Friday shows 66 percent of Iowans would favor use of reconciliation — a procedural move that precludes filibusters and only requires a simple majority to pass bills — to pass a health reform bill. A previous poll found 62 percent favored a bill that includes a public insurance option.

“We have a responsibility to govern,” he said. “We have a responsibility to change this health care system in America. I think that’s what people voted for — and that’s why they voted for Barack Obama, they wanted change. One of the main things he campaigned on was changing the health care system. So did the Democrats.”

The various changes enacted by the bill — such as removing exceptions for pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps, making insurance portable and coverage for wellness and prevention programs — are things that the American people widely support, Harkin said. Misinformation from those who have only focused on killing the bill, he said, is a key culprit as to why people support the reform items piecemeal, but have a less favorable position about the package as a whole. The above mentioned poll found only 35 percent of Iowans favor the senate’s version of health care legislation.

“There is a lot of talk about polls, but I think in every poll that has been taken when people are asked who they trust to do health reform better for them, Democrats or Republicans, the response is overwhelmingly Democrats,” Harkin said. “Overwhelmingly. But then, when they are asked about the bill we have, they say no because they have heard so much negativity about it.”