LJS: White, Terry clash over health care

Don Walton, Lincoln Journal-Star
November 20, 2009

Of course he would have voted to pass the House health care reform bill, Democratic congressional candidate Tom White says.

That was the first vital step in moving health care reform along to an eventual House-Senate conference that would produce an improved legislative package, White says.

"If you kill the House bill, nothing would happen," the Omaha state senator says during an interview in Lincoln.

"Killing the conversation now means you accept" a health care system burdened by soaring insurance and delivery costs that are bankrupting individuals and businesses and threatening the economy, White said.

Millions of Americans are unable to afford insurance or ongoing health care, he says, and are being shunted to the sidelines.

If the final version of health care reform legislation that returned to the House for a decisive vote at the end of the process was flawed, White says, then he'd be prepared to vote it down.

Absolutely, he says, the House bill "needs substantial change."

"But how can you say we do not need to talk about this more?"

Wrong, Republican Rep. Lee Terry responds.

"It's a bad bill and it's not going to get better," says Terry, who voted against enactment of the House bill.

The only way to craft needed health care reform is to start over, he says during a telephone interview from Washington.

No government option insurance alternative should be included, Terry says.

Eliminate the insurance barrier for people with pre-existing conditions and the caps on coverage, he says, and devise a plan that provides 15 million uninsured Americans access to the same kind of private insurance pool available to federal employees.

"I absolutely embrace the contrast" with White, the six-term congressman says.

"The bottom line," Terry says, "is Tom White is an enabler for Nancy Pelosi," the Speaker of the House and a favorite Republican target.

White says he knew that was coming as the two men prepare to go to battle next year in Nebraska's premiere 2010 election race in metropolitan Omaha's 2nd Congressional District.

"I know this issue is considered to be the third rail," White says.

"But I have no intention of going to Washington and doing nothing to resolve the nation's problems.

"I want to fix things, not just take up space."

White says he's motivated, in part, by his own personal experience.

Fourteen years ago, at age 39, White was diagnosed with bladder cancer.

Surgery, chemotherapy, repeated follow-up exams saved his life.

"It was expensive," White says. "I'm a walking precondition. I fought for years to get coverage.

"I'm alive today because of first-rate medicine," White says.

"But how can I say I get to live because I have more money than you and I could afford the care?

"We have the best health care in the world, but middle-class Americans increasingly can't afford it."

The flashpoint in Terry's opposition is the so-called public option.

A government insurance alternative inevitably would lead to a single-payer government health care system, Terry argues.

"I'm resisting the government takeover of people's health care," says Terry.

"It would result in a reduction in the quality of their health care."

The House bill included a public option. The Senate plan unveiled this week would create a government insurance option, beginning in 2014, but gives individual states the opportunity to choose not to participate.

White says he's willing to consider a public option, but only if it's crafted "so there is no predatory pricing" that gives the government option an unfair advantage over private insurance plans.

Terry says a vote for Democratic health care reform is "a vote for a lot of government debt and a lot of taxes."

White says the greater cost is to allow health insurance and health care costs to continue to balloon, "crippling our economy" along with individual lives.

Controlling costs will help reduce projected federal budget deficits, he says.

The revised Senate plan that emerged on Wednesday could slice $127 billion from the budget deficit over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office estimated.