The Senate Finance Committee is still in a closed-door debate over its healthcare reform bill, one week after finishing a mark-up and voting on amendments to the bill.
Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said last week the committee would vote on the bill by Wednesday, but observers say it's now unlikely a bill will be passed this week.
White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that President Barack Obama isn't worried about the delay. "I think the committee believes they're making progress, " Gibbs said.
Gibbs said the committee is waiting for some Congressional Budget Office estimates on the bill proposed by Baucus on Sept. 16.
According to Baucus, the "America's Healthy Future Act" would lower healthcare costs, provide quality healthcare and reduce the federal deficit over 10 years. The bill was initially estimated to cost $865 billion.
On Sept. 29, the committee rejected an amendment to include a public health option, a move analysts expected and alluded to early by Baucus. House Democrats have made it clear they will go to the mat to retain the public health option in any reform that passes Congress.
After the committee passes its version of health reform, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will have the difficult task of combining it with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee bill, the "Affordable Health Choices Act," which passed July 16.
That bill, proposed by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), a longtime health reform advocate and the committee's chairman, includes more than 160 Republican amendments accepted during the month-long mark-up, one of the longest in Congressional history. It was approved by a vote of 13 to 10, along party lines, and included a public health option. The Baucus bill is said to have 150 amendments.
Gibbs said the White House has pushed a public health option, but the Senate bill will fall to Reid's discretion.
"I assume that they'll ask the White House for varying opinions on different issues," he said.
At an Oct. 2 Nevada town hall meeting on healthcare, Reid said, "We are closer to delivering reform than we have been in the last 60 years."