Obama to sign Senate health reform bill Tuesday

President Obama will sign the Senate health care reform bill on Tuesday "aides said, in an effort to build momentum for the Senate to complete its fixes on the legislation," The New York Times reports. "The ceremony, scheduled to take place on the White House South Lawn, is expected to include members of Congress, doctors and nurses and ordinary Americans who will benefit from the bill" (Zeleny, 3/22).

The Washington Post: The Senate will begin its work as soon as Obama signs the Senate bill, "said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). The debate will be limited to 20 hours and likely will end early Thursday, Manley said. Then begins a series of votes on amendments, a process with no time limit but that allows for just one minute between votes." Senate Democrat leaders don't know how long the voting will last, though many still expect to leave for Easter recess on time beginning Saturday. In addition, "(t)he legislation is certain to be a major element of the midterm election campaign season. Obama plans to travel Thursday to Iowa City, Iowa, to underscore the bill's immediate effects" (Murray, Montgomery and Wilson, 3/22).

But just hours after the measure was approved by the House, Politico reports that GOP attorneys general are preparing to file lawsuits challenging the measure's insurance mandates. Other Republican officials are calling for the measures repeal or other steps to block its implementation. Among them -- former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and  Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. "Repeal would, at the very least, probably require that Republicans take both houses of Congress with sufficient majorities to override a presidential veto. Legal challenges directed against the insurance mandates in the bill are speculative and would probably take years to reach the Supreme Court (Barr, 3/22).

Roll Call: "Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) both announced plans to introduce bills to repeal what they referred to as 'Obamacare.' DeMint vowed to file legislation this week; King didn't say when to expect his proposal. … Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned that Democrats who voted for the overhaul are in store for tough political consequences in the midterm elections. 'We're going to try to repeal this, and we are going to have a very spirited campaign coming up between now and November. And there will be a very heavy price to pay for it,' McCain said Monday on 'Good Morning America'" (Bendery, 3/22).

Politico Live Pulse, in a separate story, reports on Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., announcement that she will not support the reconciliation bill. "She has been threatening for weeks to oppose the measure, saying she did not favor using reconciliation to pass it. But she has also said she wanted to take a look at the bill. … 'The Reconciliation package devised by the House includes matters unrelated to health care and employs a legislative process that wasn't subject to the same transparency and thorough debate that we used in the Senate. I cannot support this process,'" Lincoln wrote in a statement released Sunday (Shiner, 3/22).


Kaiser Health NewsThis article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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