WASHINGTON — Liberals’ longtime dream of a government-run health care system for all died Wednesday in the Senate, but Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont vowed it will return when the realization dawns that private insurance companies “are no longer needed.”
The demise of Sanders’ amendment, which aimed to set up a single-payer health system, came as Senate Democratic leaders and the White House sought agreement with Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., to become the 60th supporter of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul — the number needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.
Nelson has met three times in the past nine days with Obama.
While Nelson is seeking stricter curbs on abortions in the insurance system that the bill would establish, he also has raised issues in his home state that are unrelated to the health care legislation, according to an official with close ties to the senator. The official spoke on grounds of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Sanders, an independent and a socialist, said his plan is the only one that “eliminates the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, administrative costs, bureaucracy and profiteering that is engendered by the private insurance companies.”
His remarks drew handshakes and even a hug or two from Democrats who had filed into the Senate to hear him.
Sanders acknowledged the proposal lacked the votes to pass, and he chose to withdraw it after Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., exercised his prerogative and required Senate clerks to begin reading the 767-page proposal aloud to a nearly empty chamber. After three hours, they were 139 pages into it.
GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the incident shows the majority will “do anything to jam through a 2,000-page bill before the American people or any of us has a chance to read it.”
The House already has approved its version of the health care bill.
Also Wednesday, senators said they’ve been told the pharmaceutical industry will contribute billions of dollars more than it has previously promised for the health care overhaul, with the money being used to close a gap in Medicare drug coverage.
Several senators said that expectation was a factor Tuesday, when more than a dozen Democrats reversed their previous positions and voted to kill a Senate effort to allow low-cost drugs to be imported into the U.S. The extra money would be used to close the so-called doughnut hole, the temporary gap in prescription- drug coverage for Medicare recipients.
Several health care lobbyists said they understood that drugmakers would contribute about $20 billion above the $80 billion over 10 years they agreed to provide in a June deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee chairman.
