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House Dems Proposing Health Care Agenda
By DAVID ESPOASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) - House Democrats intend to outline a health care agenda Wednesday that would bring millions of low-income working parents under an existing government program while giving uninsured Americans age 55 and older the ability to buy coverage through Medicare.
Democrats also want to permit the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada and elsewhere, subject to safety regulations, and give Medicare authority to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers in this country.
According to a fact sheet prepared for distribution, Democrats also intend to offer a 50 percent tax credit to help small businesses and the self-employed afford insurance.
"Democrats are putting forward specific steps to promote fairness by improving health care," says the material, prepared by the office of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. Included are steps "expanding access to affordable health care coverage ... cutting health care costs, increasing biomedical research and reducing racial and ethnic disparities in health care."
The material contained no indication of the cost of the proposals or how Pelosi and other Democratic leaders would propose paying for them. Many Democrats advocate rolling back tax cuts that Congress has passed in recent years that benefit the wealthy and spending the money on social programs or using it to reduce the deficit.
Democrats have embraced most if not all of the measures in some form in the past, emphatically so in the case of measures to permit the importation of prescription drugs and allow Medicare to negotiate for lower prices.
"Currently, the only entity in this country that cannot bargain for lower group drug prices is Medicare," says the Democrats' written material. "The states, Fortune 500 companies, large pharmacy chains and the Veterans' Administration all use their bargaining clout to obtain lower drug prices for the patients they represent."
The Bush administration and congressional Republicans declined to endorse such a proposal while drafting landmark Medicare legislation two years ago. They have also refused to accept proposals to allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada, saying the Food and Drug Administration could not vouch for their safety.
As the minority party, House Democrats have no hope of winning passage of their agenda on their own and little hope of gaining the Republican support they would need to prevail.
In political terms, though, they have periodically outlined broad agendas on a variety of issues in a bid for public support.
The Democrats intend to propose that an estimated 7.5 million parents who are counted among the working poor be made eligible for a government program that currently provides coverage to their children.
Americans between the ages of 55 and 65 would be permitted to buy coverage through Medicare. They would receive a tax break to make the cost more affordable under the plan.
