Restriction may have little effect

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a liberal lawmaker from San Francisco, faced some wrenching political choices going into Saturday’s vote on a health care reform bill.

Centrist “Blue Dog” Democrats were seeking concessions for their votes. The biggest one, sought by Roman Catholic bishops, would have blocked use of federal subsidies for health insurance that covers elective abortions.

You could argue that a more skilled politician might have seen this play coming and deflected it. Yet at the moment of truth, Pelosi made the right call. Had she not acceded to the demands of the Blue Dogs, the House probably would have rejected a potential expansion of health care coverage to 36 million Americans. ...

Without a doubt, the House-approved restriction on abortion funding will complicate the Senate’s deliberations. If included in a final bill, it would likely prompt many private insurance companies to drop abortion as a covered procedure. Otherwise, such companies would be unable to compete for low-and middle-income customers who would be eligible for subsidized insurance under the legislation.

For pro-choice advocates, this is a rallying cry, but it’s one they must keep in perspective. A 2003 study found that only 13 percent of abortions were directly billed to insurance companies. In other words, the House abortion restrictions contained in the House bill may have far less effect than some fear – or some hope for.

– Sacramento Bee

Preserve Medicare-style plan

The Democratic-controlled House took a historic step in passing a health-care bill over the weekend, yet the measure – unless it’s modified – could mean the death knell for health reform this year.

... [T]he House plan clearly cannot serve as the only template for the bill that eventually reaches President Obama’s desk. Primarily, that’s because it’s unaffordable in its present form despite bearing the title “Affordable Health Care for America Act.”

Unfortunately, the House measure does little to rein in escalating health-care costs, and that, in the end, would harm the middle class and small businesses alike.

Although the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the measure would reduce federal deficits by about $104 billion over a decade, the House conveniently excluded $250 billion in estimated Medicare payments to doctors over the same decade. ...

One of the surest means to tamp down costs is to implement a Medicare-style health plan, as the House proposed. So even though the so-called public option is a deal-killer for Republicans and a few conservative Democrats and independents like Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Senate must find a way to craft a compromise that preserves this key reform measure.

– The Philadelphia Inquirer

Improve upon House action

It’s light on cost savings and weak on the public option. It risks setting abortion policy that could turn into a poison pill for reform. But the flaws of the health care legislation that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday pale before the stellar accomplishment it represents: a significant step toward a national health care policy approaching the standard of the rest of the industrialized world. ...

And while last summer the voices of naysayers were loudest, a groundswell of public opinion now is rising in favor of reform. ... It’s time for companies struggling to pay rising insurance premiums to speak up. It’s time for groups holding out for the all-government single-payer option to compromise and get behind a plan that represents reasonable progress toward health coverage for all. ...

Let’s hope the Senate can muster courage and creativity to take what’s been done, improve upon it and make history.

– San Jose Mercury News