Saying the health care bill will save money for families and is supported by hospitals, Rep. Tom Perriello said Friday that he’s likely to vote ‘yes’ on Sunday when the roll is called in the House of Representatives.
The bill will save $2,000 a year in health costs for a family of four with a $60,000 income, Perriello said.
“That’s real money for working families,” Perriello said. “It means a lot on Main Street.”
The savings estimate was provided by the Congressional Budget Office. Perriello said he didn’t put a lot of faith in economists’ predictions, but he also said the CBO usually is conservative when it estimates future savings.
“I made my ‘yes’ conditional on a letter being signed by at least 50 senators saying they were committed to seeing this through,” Perriello said Friday during a conference call with reporters.
“I will not support the ‘Cornhusker kickback’ or the ‘Louisiana purchase,’” Perriello said, referring to the Senate bill’s special provisions for Nebraska and Louisiana that won the votes of senators Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Mary Landreau, D-La.
“Nothing in my experience the last 15 months gives me any reason to trust the Senate” to conform the bill to “fixes” the House has put into its latest language unless the agreement is signed, Perriello said.
The House fixes altered the Senate’s special Medicare payments in Nebraska, but it wasn’t clear Friday that the Louisiana provisions had been changed, the Associated Press reported.
Still, several hospitals around the Charlottesville-to-Danville 5th District came out Friday in favor of the House language, Perriello said. Among them were hospitals in Danville, Martinsville, Rocky Mount, and the University of Virginia Medical Center.
“I urge you to support the comprehensive health reform legislation,” said a letter from Joseph Roach, chief executive officer of Memorial Hospital of Martinsville and Henry County.
“I understand this legislation is not perfect, but I believe this is the last opportunity to make a real, positive difference in our health care delivery system,” Roach wrote to Perriello.
Until Friday, Perriello said, “The Martinsville hospital had been very critical of the bill.” The House’s reconciliation language for the 2,400-page bill had been posted on the Internet late Thursday.
“On behalf of Danville Regional Medical Center and the 1,230 people we employ in your district, I strongly urge you to support the comprehensive health reform legislation,” wrote Eric Deaton, recently hired chief executive officer.
Sally Barber, a special adviser at the University of Virginia Medical Center, wrote that the center supported the health reform package “because we believe providing more affordable health coverage for more citizens of the Commonwealth is critical.”
Unless reform occurs, she said, “the number of uninsured will continue to grow and the financial burden will fall” mostly on hospitals like U.Va, she wrote.
The legislation is imperfect but “we believe this is an important first step,” Barber said.
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