Governor Jim Doyle is praising the White House effort to advance health care reform. In a conference call from Washington, Doyle touted what he says is a White House health insurance reform plan which will help Wisconsin families. “Normal people . . . earning sixty, seventy thousand dollars with a couple of kids, to go out and try to purchase health insurance on your own is nearly impossible,” Doyle said. “This bill would dramatically help those families.”
The White House plan rejects Republican calls to scrap Democratic efforts and start over, instead merging the Senate and House bills to address some of the most controversial provisions. Republicans immediately attacked it as a government takeover of health care.
President Obama is set to meet with Congressional leaders on Thursday to discuss health care reforms. Doyle said it’s up to Republicans to decide whether they want to reach out to the White House and Democrats. “I hope where everybody remembers back to where the Republicans, the one thing they cared about getting rid of was the public option, and when the president got rid of the public option, then there were a whole bunch of other things that they forgot to mention that they were against,” he said. Doyle said he believes something similar to this White House plan will pass both the House and Senate – with or without Republican support.