On the second day of Senate debate on the healthcare reform bill, former pres candidate and current Republican senator John McCain (R-AZ) is poised to bring his amendment to a vote today or tomorrow. Using “rationing” rhetoric to explain his desire to prevent what he says are close to half a billion dollars in cuts to Medicare to fund a portion of the reform bill, McCain hopes to counter Democrats’ plans for eliminating what they see are superfluous and unnecessary costs to run the program.^[1] Dem. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md), on the other hand, is proposing government funded guaranteed coverage for mammograms without co-pays to plans as a way to combat “discrimination” at the hands of insurance companies.

Amendments to the bill in its current form will more than likely constitute the strategy Republican senators as a partisan body will undertake early in the debate — staking out its political territory and making its points early. Democrats will not only have to counter those issues by vote, they will also have to solidify their goals in order to reach agreement among themselves. The Mikulski amendment attempts to frame the debate in terms of policies many Democrats can agree on — abolishment of claim denials based upon discrimination by Insurance and making government financed care (Medicare) more efficient. | LINK

1. McCain’s amendment would also strive to eliminate a proposed federal CMS payment commission which would decrease costs to Medicare and Medicaid over 10 years. [↩]

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