The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a vote for next Tuesday on legislation to revamp the healthcare system, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said on Thursday.
“Since Harry Truman was president, Democrats have fought to make it more affordable to live a healthy life in America,” Mr. Reid said, according to The New York Times. “Every day, we come closer to achieving that goal.”
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The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the committee’s version of health legislation would provide coverage to 29 million uninsured Americans but would still pare future federal deficits by slowing the growth of spending on medical care.
The much-anticipated cost analysis showed the bill meeting President Obama’s main requirements, including his demand that health legislation not add “one dime to the deficit.” Indeed, the budget office said, the bill would reduce deficits by a total of $81 billion in the decade starting next year.
But Republicans downplayed the significance of the cost analysis. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, went so far as to call the cost analysis “irrelevant.”
“The fact is, the bill it’s referring to will never see the light of day,” Mr. McConnell said on Thursday. “That’s because the real bill will soon be cobbled together in a secret conference room somewhere in the Capitol by a handful of Democrat senators and White House officials.”
Read the full story in The New York Times.
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