by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA News Service

WASHINGTON – As U.S. Senators and members of the House of Representatives prepare to negotiate to combine the two distinctly different health care bills, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are vowing once again to push for a public option to make the final bill affordable for their largely African-American and low income constituencies.

Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)

Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.)

In a joint statement released just before the Senate’s long-awaited Christmas Eve passage of the bill, CBC Chair Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-chair Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), said, “If the bill requires people to buy health insurance, there must be a public option to bring down costs by providing lower-cost competition to private insurers and choice to consumers.”

Translation: Be ready for acrimonious debate before the final version goes back before both houses for final passage and ultimately to the White House for signing by President Obama. The public option barely squeaked by (220-215) when the House passed the bill by five votes on November 7.

The Senate left the public option out of the bill because it was a deal-breaker for conservative Democrats. The bill passed 60-39, disabling a filibuster by Republicans with the 60 votes or three-fifths of the Senate. Fifty-eight Democratic senators were joined by two Independents.

President Obama – in route to achieving a key campaign promise – has said the public option is not absolutely necessary as long as the health bill has other key components, such as Medicaid, that could serve the same end when it comes to providing affordability for low income or no income people.

Components that Lee and Woolsey say the bill must have in order to meet their concerns are:

• Affordability protections: Meaning, the “legislation must protect lower and middle-income individuals by ensuring that subsidies make coverage affordable and that Medicaid patients have access to primary care physicians.”

• Tighter market regulation: Meaning, “New regulations must keep premiums reasonable and end abusive practices. Insurance companies should no longer be exempt from anti-trust laws and any premium increases must be reviewed before they take effect.”

•Employer mandates: Meaning, “If individuals are required to buy insurance, employers should be required to provide it.”

• Tax surcharges: Meaning, “Health care reform should be financed by tax surcharges on the wealthy not excise taxes on health insurance plans offered to many workers and union members.”

The painstaking fight for maximum health care affordability is clearly not over.

“While we still have much work to do, we applaud Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sens. Ben Cardin and Roland Burris for their hard work to ensure that the much needed health disparities provision remained in the legislation,” the Lee-Woolsey statement said. “Also, we applaud Sen. Bernie Sanders for helping to secure $10 billion more in the revised bill for community health centers.”

Meanwhile, the passage was applauded by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also asserted that the public option is still a need.

“Forty-five million families (are) without health insurance as we approach the year 2010, some 10 million of them children. For too long, America’s record on health care has been a moral disgrace. By voting for health care today, the Congress is taking steps to reverse this trend,” he said in a statement.

“Without a single payer system or some form of public option, the Senate bill relies too much on the good will of the insurance industries, health care providers, pharmaceutical companies to hold premiums and costs down and make quality health care truly more affordable and accessible. That is unlikely, given the army of lobbyists these forces have deployed to safeguard their private interests, and undermine and scuttle health care reform.”

Despite objections from the CBC and the Progress Caucus, Democratic leaders seem willing to sacrifice the public option in order to at least pass a palatable health care bill.

House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, the highest level African-American in Congressional leadership, commended Senate Majority Reid and his Democratic colleagues in the Senate for passage without mentioning the public option. In his roll as Whip - to move the legislation toward passage – Clyburn pointed to the positives of both bills.

“Both House and Senate bills cut the deficit, bring down rapidly rising health care costs for families and businesses, provide choice, and end discriminatory practices of the insurance industry that deny coverage if you get sick or have a pre-existing condition,”  said Clyburn (D- S.C.)

“I look forward to working with my Senate colleagues and the President on a final bill that meets the core principles of health reform: affordability for the middle class, security for our seniors, responsibility to our children by reducing the deficit, and accountability for the insurance industry.”