Dole: Health care reform coming late this year or next; "you lost" when Clinton-era reform failed
Former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole says "there will be a signing ceremony" for a health care reform bill either late this year or early next.
But the former presidential candidate says he isn't sure what the bill will say.
Dole, 86, spoke with reporters after an hour-long speech at a health care reform summit sponsored by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City.
He told the group that he and former Sens. Tom Daschle, Howard Baker, and George Mitchell will issue a statement later today urging Congress to enact health care reform as soon as possible.
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UPDATE, 4:43: The statement is just from Dole and Daschle, and it's attached below. An excerpt:
"...Congress could be close to passing comprehensive health reform. The American people have waited decades and if this moment passes us by, it may be decades more before there is another opportunity. The current approaches suggested by the Congress are far from perfect, but they do provide some basis on which Congress can move forward and we urge the joint leadership to get together for America’s sake."
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And he repeatedly blamed "partisanship" for the failure to produce a bill so far.
"Sometimes people fight you just to fight you," he said. "They don't want Reagan to get it, they don't want Obama to get it, so we've got to kill it...
"Health care is one of those things...Now we've got to do something."
Dole's speech, as is usually the case, wandered over various subjects -- presidential humor, his own career, Social Security reform, and Monica Lewinski, who was Dole's neighbor for a time in the Watergate complex in the 1990s.
"If I'd had little wiretap there, I could've been president," Dole said, adding: "I never had..... a conversation with that lady."
Dole also talked about the failure to get a health care reform bill through Congress in 1993 and 1994 when President Bill Clinton proposed it.
He blamed himself -- and Hillary Clinton -- and finally politics.
"Politics took over," he said. "And you lost."
Dole repeated his opposition to a public option for health insurance, which he said would drive private companies out of business.
And he said he's also worried about paying for the cost of health care reform, which is estimated at $800 billion to $1 trillion over ten years.
But, he said, "I believe we can do it." He urged President Obama to meet privately with members of Congress and not to set a deadline for a bill.
Dole also said he had been approached by Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and asked not to issue a statement calling for passage of a health care reform bill, a request he said he declined.
Dole walked slowly and spoke in a high but clear voice. He underwent surgery earlier this year and told reporters he's thinking about another operation on his knee.
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