Goodlatte slams House health care bill

A $1.2 trillion health care bill set for debate in the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday is facing a significant bipartisan attack, said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-6th District, in a conference call on Thursday.

Goodlatte said much of the recent work on the bill has been out of the public eye, and exclusive to Democrats on the left side of the aisle.

“The focus has been on backdoor negotiations that have been taking place,” to which no Republican representatives have been invited, Goodlatte said in a conference call.

He called the resulting bill, which combines input from the different committees, “an absolute monstrosity” that has now doubled in size and scope.

Originally about 1,000 pages long, Goodlatte said the bill is now more than 2,000 pages.

“Instead of having 53 … new government agencies and programs, that’s now jumped to 111 new government agencies and programs,” he said.

Goodlatte’s comments came as the American Medical Association and AARP, the influential lobbying organization for seniors, threw their support behind the plan drafted by House Democrats.

Goodlatte emphasized that there is no Republican support for the bill as it stands now, but he has noticed firsthand that a significant number of Democrats stand against the legislation.

“My estimation is that there are far more Democrats who are opposed to this bill than the Democratic leadership can af-ford to lose and still pass it,” Goodlatte said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, has insisted she will have the votes necessary to pass the bill.

Key issues holding up Democrats, he said, are largely similar to the issues that have always concerned Republicans about the legislation.

The amount of spending the bill would introduce, cuts to the Medicare program, and concerns that the bill would not prohibit illegal residents from abusing the system, Goodlatte said, are all at the forefront.

Also, he said, the bill does not contain language that would explicitly prevent taxpayer money from being used to fund abortions.

“Those are just some of the issues that they are raising,” Goodlatte said.

Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District, said last week that the abortion issue was one of his personal hang-ups on the bill, in-dicating that he was trying to get the bill’s language changed.

Perriello also said the bill would have to allow interstate competition among health insurance companies, in order to conform to his liking.

Goodlatte said Thursday that some Democrats were being influenced by state election races, including the Republican sweep in Virginia.

He said some have mentioned to him that “there is definitely a different mood out there in the electorate than there was one year ago.”

The House bill would cover 96 percent of Americans, providing government subsidies beginning in 2013 to extend coverage to millions who now lack it. Self-employed people and small businesses could buy coverage through the new exchanges, either from a private insurer or a new government plan that would compete. All the plans sold through the exchange would have to follow basic consumer protection rules.

For the first time, almost all individuals would be required to purchase insurance or pay a fine, and employers would be required to insure their employees. Insurance companies would be barred from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions or charging much higher rates to older people.

Goodlatte said House Republicans are trying to take advantage of the opportunity to whittle the bill down and simplify it.

The Republican version of the bill, he said, was “a much more streamlined bill that actually lowers the cost of health insurance premiums, lowers the national debt, does not increase anyone’s taxes at all, and we feel makes the kind of com-mon-sense reforms that the people of this country want to see.”

Overall, Goodlatte said the current bill is too complicated and not concrete enough to satisfy concerned lawmakers.

“This bill,” he said, “has way too many moving parts for a lot of people with common sense, on both sides of the aisle, to feel at all comfortable with it.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.