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

TOPEKA — The head of a statewide consumer coalition is expecting Sunday’s U.S. House vote on health reform legislation to be “razor thin.”

Corrie Edwards, executive director of the Kansas Health Consumer Coalition, participates in daily conference calls conducted by national organizations backing reform, including the left-leaning Families USA.

On recent calls, Edwards said, advocates have been optimistic that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will deliver the votes to pass the compromise reform bill proposed by President Obama, which is closer to a version that the Senate passed late last year than one approved earlier by the House.

Though she once favored the House bill because it contained a government-run public option for people who couldn’t afford private insurance, Edwards said she now supports the president’s bill, which rather than a government plan establishes purchasing cooperatives designed to help people find affordable private coverage

“I can live with this because it addresses three important issues,” Edwards said, referring to affordability provisions that would provide subsidies and tax credits to individuals and small businesses and market-reforms that among other things would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

An expansion of Medicaid that would qualify thousands more low-income Kansas adults for coverage is also important, Edwards said.

“That shouldn’t be overlooked. That’s huge,” she said.

The proposed changes would make an additional 60,000 adults eligible for Medicaid, according to the Kansas Health Policy Authority.

The three Kansas Republicans in the House — Reps. Lynn Jenkins, Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt — all oppose the reform bill. They have characterized it as a government takeover of health care and have charged that it doesn’t adequately address the problem of soaring health-care costs.

Congressman Dennis Moore, the lone Democrat in the Kansas delegation, is expected to vote for the bill.

“I will vote for this bill because it addresses the issues of coverage, fiscal responsibility, quality and choice,” Moore, who is not running for re-election, said in a prepared statement. “We can no longer afford to do nothing. We must meet this challenge head-on.”

A recent report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that estimated the health reform bill would reduce the federal budget deficit by $138 billion over the next decade was a key to winning Moore’s support and that of other fiscally-conservative Democrats.

Poll results released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that the public continues to be almost evenly divided on health reform, with 46 percent favoring the legislation, 42 percent opposed and 12 percent reporting they were unsure. The poll also revealed that the public doesn’t understand key elements of the legislation. For instance, 55 percent incorrectly believed that the CBO had said that passing the bill would lead to an increase in the deficit.