Fun Flash Games

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius said she expects the Senate to pass an
overhaul of U.S. health care next month and President Barack
Obama prefers taxing high-end medical plans to help pay for the
revamp.

“The hope is there will be 60 votes mid-December to pass
bills in Senate” before House and Senate leaders get to work on
merging their legislation in a conference committee, Sebelius
said today at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council conference
in Washington. She didn’t say when she thought final legislation
would reach President Obama.

A remake of U.S. health care, Obama’s top domestic
priority, is intended to cover tens of millions of uninsured
Americans while curbing medical costs. Senate proposals for
purchasing exchanges, subsidies and a requirement that all
Americans have coverage would cost more than $800 billion over
10 years and mark the biggest changes to U.S. health care in
more than four decades.

Obama would prefer that Congress raise revenue for a
health-care overhaul through a tax on high-end health-care
plans, as the Senate Finance Committee has included in its bill,
Sebelius said. Obama’s “preference both ultimately in terms of
cost control, but also in the fact that the payment is directly
tied to health-care, is the excise tax,” Sebelius said.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Nicole Gaouette in Washington at
ngaouette@bloomberg.net .