Groups - including Catholic Bishops - press Democrats to finish health reform

CQ Politics: "Proponents of a comprehensive health care overhaul are pressing congressional Democrats to finish the measure ... Leaders of several interest groups said at a news conference Wednesday that the House should clear the Senate-passed health care bill for President Obama's signature" (1/27).  

The Hill: Many have "grown anxious and frustrated that congressional inaction and a lack of direction from the White House could doom their mission." The groups include Healthcare for America Now, the National Coalition on Healthcare, "Families USA, leaders of the American College of Cardiology, the League of Women Voters, Easter Seals, League of United Latin American Citizens and the Small Business Majority" (Young, 1/27).

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is among the organizations now pushing Congress to pass reform, according to BusinessWeek. Like others, the group "slowed work on the legislation in recent months as they demanded changes." But they now say failure isn't acceptable after the Democrats' loss of a Senate seat derailed the original plans for passage. … The American Medical Association sounded a similar theme, urging Obama and Congress to 'enact meaningful health-system reform this year'" (Jensen and Litvan, 1/27).

The New York Times details the letter written to all members of Congress by the Catholic Bishops: "The health care debate, with all its political and ideological conflict, seems to have lost its central moral focus and policy priority, which is to ensure that affordable, quality, life-giving care is available to all. Now is not the time to abandon this task, but rather to set aside partisan divisions and special interest pressures to find ways to enact genuine reform," they write (Kirkpatrick, 1/27).