Obama health care plan in limbo

Nancy Pelosi said she did not have the votes to pass the Senate's health care bill, citing "unrest" and "unease" among House Democrats.

WASHINGTON, January 21, 2010 (AFP) - President Barack Obama's top ally in the US Congress poured cold water Thursday on a widely discussed way to rescue his embattled push to overhaul US health care from deep in political limbo.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she did not have the votes to pass the Senate's health care bill, citing "unrest" and "unease" among House Democrats who prefer their more robust version of the sweeping legislation.

"In its present form without any changes, I don't think it's possible to pass the Senate bill in the House," she told reporters. "I don't see the votes for it at this time."

Pelosi tempered her doubts by saying "nothing is discarded, everything is on the table" and underlined that Democrats "will go forward" on Obama's top domestic priority because "the present system is unsustainable."

The plan calls for extending health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans who currently lack it, while ending insurance company abuses like barring patients with preexisting conditions.

The overhaul was thrown into uncertainty after Republicans won a special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday, stripping away the already fragile 60-vote Democratic supermajority needed to ensure Senate passage.

Top House and Senate Democrats had hoped to meld the two chambers' versions and vote again on a compromise bill, but their plan collided with Republicans' newly acquired power to stall the legislation.

House Democrats met to consider their options, including passing the Senate bill and trying to change it later, crafting a stripped-down measure, or pushing a series of what one lawmaker called "bite-sized" health care proposals anchored on largely uncontroversial items in the giant package.

"We're not in a big rush," Pelosi said shortly after talks with Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid. "We'll take the time it needs."

At the White House, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said "the president believes it is the exact right thing to do by giving this some time, by letting the dust settle, if you will, and looking for the best path forward."

Republicans, gleeful over winning the Massachusetts Senate seat held for nearly a half-century by Democratic icon Ted Kennedy, have said Tuesday's election means the Democratic approach is dead.

"The bottom line is, nobody wants this bill but Washington's special interests. And if they jam it through, I think they're going to face a firestorm from the American public," said House Minority Leader John Boehner.

They have also pointed to recent public opinion polls showing stiff opposition to the Democratic approach -- though voters who say the plan does not go far enough account for much of the resistance.

And Pelosi said the vote "has not diminished the need for affordable, quality health care reform and for health care to be available to all Americans as a right, not a privilege."

"We have to get a bill passed. We know that. That's a predicate that we all subscribe to. We have to pass legislation," said Pelosi.

Democrats, already worried about the fate of their majorities in November mid-term elections, hoped to have a clear plan before Obama delivers his marquee State of the Union speech on Wednesday, aides said.

A leader on the Democrats' left flank, Representative Raul Grijalva, came out strongly against having the House pass what he termed "the irredeemable Senate bill" -- a potentially deadly blow against that approach.

Grijalva called for a two-track approach, using a Senate process called "reconciliation" that requires a mere majority for budget-related items, while packaging the most popular regulatory proposals in a separate bill.

The United States is the world's richest nation, but the only industrialized democracy that does not provide health care coverage to all of its citizens.

The United States spends more than double what Britain, France and Germany do per person on health care.

But it lags behind other countries in life expectancy and infant mortality, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development