Missouri’s junior Senator thinks it will be months, not weeks, before Congress passes a healthcare reform bill.
Senator McCaskill says two Senate committees are working on healthcare reform and their product will be gone through, page by page, before action is taken. She says the work is hard, which is why the issue has been talked about but why nothing has been done for sixty years.
McCaskill lists two major concerns—making sure people have choices and making sure the final plan can be paid for.
"There is no way we can do this without pain," she says. "If it were easy and simple and if it wasn’t going to be painful for somebody it would have happened a long time ago." McCaskill says the overall goal of healthcare reform is the key to bringing down the federal deficit.
McCaskill says it’s not enough to enhance coverage if Congress does not make the program less expensive.
President Obama is pressuring Congress to act, but McCaskill says he’s not doing that to rush the process. She says he’s setting deadlines because he recognizes that Congress has a hard time making decisions on important issues