Kansas Health Institute | Information For Policy Makers. Health for Kansans.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Obama is likely to have the support of only one Kansas member of Congress for his new health reform proposal.

But even that is yet uncertain.

Congressman Dennis Moore, a 3rd District Democrat who has announced he wouldn’t seek election to a seventh term, voted last fall for the House version of the reform bill, which passed 220-215.

A vote on the president’s proposal – a blend of the Democratic bills passed previously by the House and Senate with some new provisions favored by Republicans – is also expected to be close.

Brandon Naylor, a Moore spokesman, said the congressman “remains in support of health care reform,” but that he won’t make a final decision how to vote until he’s had an opportunity to review the president’s proposal in legislative language.

A version could be ready for review by the Congressional Budget Office this week. But it is still unclear when Congressional leaders will schedule votes on the president’s plan.

Naylor characterized the president’s recent day-long summit with congressional leaders as a “pivotal point” in the debate and said it had helped Democrats regain focus. He said a projection by the Congressional Budget Office that the health reform measure that earlier passed the House would lower the budget deficit was central to Moore’s support for it.

The other three Kansans in the U.S. House – all Republicans – voted against the bill. So did the state’s two U.S. senators, also Republicans. Recent statements from each indicate they all remain opposed to the president’s plan.

For example, U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said Obama’s efforts to include some Republican ideas after the summit hadn’t changed the bill enough to warrant GOP support.

“There are fundamental disagreements that will prevent me and many of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle from supporting this trillion-dollar government takeover of health care, which will lead to rationing and the demise of the doctor-patient relationship,” Roberts said.

On Wednesday, Obama launched what aides said would be an aggressive final push to get a health reform bill through Congress and to his desk.

Saying that Congress owed the American people a final vote on reform, Obama made it clear he was ready to brush aside Republican objections and use the budget reconciliation process to make it happen.

“It deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote that was cast on welfare reform, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, COBRA health coverage for the unemployed and both Bush tax cuts – all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority,” Obama said, specifically referencing occasions when Republicans and Democrats used reconciliation to pass important legislation.

Using that process for health reform would allow Democrats to pass it with a simple majority in the Senate rather than the supermajority required by the normal rules to end filibusters and vote on bills.

Obama said that his proposal, which would require most individuals to purchase insurance, would extend health coverage to more than 31 million uninsured Americans while the incremental approach favored by Republicans would initially cover only 3 million.

It would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. And it would allow states to establish purchasing cooperatives with the goal of making health insurance more affordable and accessible to individuals and small businesses.