Senate Democrats unveil healthcare bill

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading Senate Democrats unveiled on Tuesday a plan to reshape U.S. healthcare that calls for sweeping insurance market reforms and prohibits insurers from denying coverage or charging more due to medical history.

The measure also would require individuals to buy insurance, provide subsidies to help make coverage affordable and set up a new government plan to help provide medical coverage for the uninsured.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee's bill is one of at least three healthcare proposals brewing in Congress, which Democrats hope will lead to legislation that President Barack Obama can sign into law by October.

"Our goal is to strengthen what works and fix what doesn't," Senator Edward Kennedy, chairman of the committee, said in a statement that accompanied the bill's unveiling.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and a second group of U.S. senators led by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus are developing similar proposals. Baucus has been working with Kennedy's panel and is expected to unveil his version of the bill in the coming days.

Meanwhile Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee, one of three panels writing the House version of the bill, met with Obama to discuss the legislation. The White House issued a statement saying the group agreed that the cost of the overhaul, which some estimates put at about $1.2 trillion, should not add to budget deficits.

The White House said Obama -- under pressure from critics over his huge spending and deficit plans -- would soon spell out more cost savings for the Medicare and Medicaid health programs for the elderly and poor.

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