One day after Senate Democratic leaders unveiled their health-care bill, North Carolina's two senators dug in their heels on opposite sides of a debate that has now entered a new phase.
Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat from Greensboro, said she intends to vote for the bill because she believes that it will lower health-care costs, expand insurance coverage and reduce the federal-budget deficit.
"To me, this is pro-consumer, pro-patient. It's a bill that is going to make health insurance more affordable," Hagan said.
Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from Winston-Salem, said he does not think that the bill's proposals to reduce the deficit are realistic. He said he and other Republicans will use the impending floor debate in the Senate to try to inform Americans of what Republicans see as the bill's dangers.
"This does not bring the cost of health care down. It increases the amount of money being spent on health care," Burr said.
Both senators spoke in phone interviews from Capitol Hill as they and their staffs were still trying to analyze the 2,074-page bill, which was unveiled Wednesday by Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader.
Hagan's praise for the bill yesterday is noteworthy because, for months, she has been cautious when discussing the prospect of a major overhaul of the nation's health system. She is one of a small group of moderate Senate Democrats who have been the target of heavy advertising and lobbying by groups who are both for and against President Obama's plans for health reform.
Those moderates will be key to the bill's chance of passing. Its first test will come soon, when the Senate will consider a procedural motion to debate the bill. Sixty votes are needed for debate to proceed.
Hagan said yesterday that, while she is still reviewing the text of the bill, she sees many good things in it and is focused on helping get it passed in the Senate. She did not name anything in the bill that she wants to see changed.
The House has already passed its own health-care bill, which differs in several respects from the Senate's bill. For instance, both bills would create a new government insurance option to compete with private plans, but the Senate bill, unlike the House bill, would allow states to pass laws opting out of the public option.
And while the House bill would help pay for itself with a tax increase on high-income people, the Senate bill would do so with a new excise tax on expensive "Cadillac" insurance plans.
The Senate's bill represents a combination of two earlier pieces of legislation that moved through Senate committees. A major selling point for Hagan and other Democrats was the estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that the Senate bill would reduce the federal deficit by $130 billion over the next 10 years. But Burr strongly disagrees with that estimate.
He cited several aspects of the bill that he does not believe are fully paid for, and he said that much of the proposed cost savings in the bill relies on future health-care spending cuts, which he said are unlikely to materialize.
jromoser@wsjournal.com
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