Matheson will not support Demos' health-reform bill

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, announced Friday that he has decided to vote against the House Democrats' health-care reform bill, saying he could not gain enough changes in it to win his support.

"I do not believe that this bill makes the system reforms needed to ensure financial stability for our families, our businesses and our federal treasury," Matheson said. "A one-size-fits-all, nationally run plan that doesn't acknowledge the different health demographics in the states isn't the answer."

That comes after House leaders — and President Barack Obama himself — had worked for months with Matheson and other moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats trying to make enough changes to earn their support. The moderate Democrats are seen as the key swing votes on the bill because it has virtually no support from Republicans.

Amid defections that include Matheson's, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters Friday that leaders did not yet have enough votes to pass the reform bill and signaled that they may push back a scheduled Saturday vote on it to Sunday or early next week.

Matheson, chairman of the Blue Dog Caucus, also voted in committee against an earlier version of the bill but continued to work with leaders of his party for changes.

On Friday, he even asked the House Rules Committee to allow a vote to strip the hotly contested "public option" out of the bill that calls for a government-run insurance program to be among options offered to consumers.

In the end, Matheson said he found he could not support the final bill because it fails to meet his goals of covering the uninsured while also ensuring that the health-care system is secure, stable and affordable.

He said he is concerned that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the bill would lead to greater spending on health care and expand the percentage of the federal budget going to it. He said more reforms to the system are needed to save money, but the bill does not make them.

"Putting millions of additional people into a broken system will not work," he said.

Matheson said, however, that he is encouraged that a "bipartisan, budget-deficit-neutral, cost-lowering bill is on the table in the Senate," and that compromise can still lead to a bill that he can support.

He said that "passing health-care reform is a moral and a fiscal necessity. I believe that everyone in this country should have access to quality affordable health care. On the practical side, we will never balance our federal budget and reduce our dangerous levels of debt without health-care reform."

Matheson added, "The path we are on is not sustainable. Without real reform, we will continue to strain family budgets, threaten the survival of small businesses and explode our national deficits."

e-mail: lee@desnews.com