Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have called on Congress to pass comprehensive healthcare reform legislation for the president to sign by July 4.
At a March Senate Finance Committee hearing, Baucus said healthcare reform is "imperative."
"If we delayed, premiums would rise even further out of reach," he said. "And if we delayed, federal healthcare spending would soak up an even greater share of our nation's income."
Baucus said he and Grassley have laid out a schedule to have a bill ready by June. They will propose legislation that addresses cost, quality and coverage.
"We need to address all three objectives at the same time,” Baucus said. “They are interconnected. If you do not address them together, you will never really address any of them alone.”
President Barack Obama has called for healthcare reform legislation by the end of 2009. Grassley said he shares the president's commitment to health reform as a top priority, but cautioned, "it won't fix all the problems with our economy nor will it solve the entitlement crisis. Fixing healthcare is necessary but not sufficient."
Grassley said he looks forward to working on a bipartisan solution, yet wants to ensure healthcare reform is financed responsibly. "We have a long way to go and a lot of heavy lifting ahead of us," he added.
"At this point, I haven't heard from any Republican Senators that we shouldn't be working on healthcare reform this year," Grassley said.
At the March hearing, Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, backed the senators' call for urgency.
"Over the medium to long term, the nation is thus on an unsustainable fiscal course," he said. "We need to act, and since the key to our fiscal future is healthcare, it makes sense to begin the process of putting the nation on a sounder fiscal path by tackling health reform."
Orszag said no single proposal or approach would address all the factors that contribute to growing healthcare costs. Instead, he said the administration would engage in continuous efforts that will lead progressively over time to more efficient and high-quality healthcare.