Grassley sees 'progress by inches' on health-care reform

The Senate Finance Committee is “making progress by inches,” but probably not enough to give preliminary approval to a health-care reform package before the August congressional recess, Sen. Chuck Grassley said Wednesday.

The delay is due both to the complexity of the issues remaining and because Senate negotiators -- three Democrats and three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee – are being more thorough than members of the House, who, Grassley suggested, “don't know how to do what they want to do.”

The Senate negotiators have reduced the cost of their plan from $1.6 trillion, based on the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office scoring of the bill, to under $900 billion, according to Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana. That plan would cover 95 percent of Americans by 2015 and the cost would be completely offset.

Grassley was quick to add that the $800 billion-plus price over 10 years would not be all new money. Some would be redistributed health care funds. Much of it would be savings as a result of changes in the health-care delivery system, the Iowa Republican said.

Still there are myriad details to be addressed before he and Baucus can present a plan to their respective caucuses, Grassley said. Even if the Senate committee members have agreed on 95 percent of the issues, “the 5 percent left are very difficult and I can't say that we're on the edge of getting them decided,” Grassley said. “We're making some progress by inches.”

The House appears to be moving more quickly, he said, but in the process representatives are delegating rule-making authority to the secretary of Health and Human Services because they “don't know what they're doing.”

“They're just booting the ball to the secretary of HHS,” Grassley said. “We're trying to work through these things and it takes time.”

Perhaps more time than the committee has before the Senate leaves Washington for its summer state work period that begins Aug. 10.

“I think it's kind of difficult to get it there,” Grassley said.