No Soup for You! Democrats take “Universal” Health Care Off the Table

As half a million Americans a month lose their jobs and employee-based health insurance, it would be some comfort if our Democratic leaders could at least pretend some concern about the issue:

Top Dem: No comprehensive health reform this year

A prominent House Democrat said he doesn’t expect a comprehensive healthcare reform bill to pass Congress in 2009, saying an incremental approach to covering the uninsured would be better “than to go out and just bite something you can’t chew.”

House Majority Whip James Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) timeline on tackling healthcare is at odds with the timetable proposed by Senate Democrats and could represent a major shift in the House Democrats’ strategy of dealing with the uninsured.

During an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program that aired on Sunday, Clyburn said he doesn’t anticipate that comprehensive healthcare legislation will be approved in 2009.

While noting he does not know exactly when President Obama want to move forward with a universal healthcare measure, Clyburn said, “If you take what we’ve done with [the State Children’s Health Insurance Program bill] and then you follow with [more spending] on community health centers, you would have gone a long way to building a foundation upon which to build a universal access healthcare program.

“I would much rather see it done that way, incrementally, than to go out and just bite something you can’t chew. We’ve been down that road. I still remember 1994.”