Connolly: Taxing benefits is a no-go for health care reform

Rep. Gerald E. “Gerry” Connolly said Tuesday that he will not support health care reform that requires taxing workers for the benefits they receive from employers.

“That would be a killer here in my district,” said Connolly, who represents much of Prince William County. “However, I think almost everything else ought to be on the table, including the public option.”

The 11th District Democrat made his comments in a conference call with reporters to preface an appearance Wednesday with President Barack Obama.

They’ll be at a town hall meeting on health care at Northern Virginia Community College’s Annandale campus.

Connolly said that Obama favors a plan that has a government component, and he expects that whatever legislation passes the House of Representatives will include some kind of public plan.
The Senate is looking at public options and some sort of large nonprofit co-op.

“I’m agnostic between the two,” Connolly said, “but I do believe that you have to acknowledge that private insurance has failed when you’ve got 46 million people uninsured entirely.”

The congressman also said that the loss of medical insurance benefits for lots of workers and increases in health care costs have caused lots of people, even perhaps former opponents of reform, to “rethink the system we have now.”

“I’m certainly picking that up from my constituents, including here in Prince William County,” Connolly said.

Unlike in the 1990s, when the issue was last scrutinized, there is consensus that something needs to be done about health care, said Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse, who also participated in the call.

He said even Obama’s most ardent foes would admit this.

“There are questions about what the details are, but no one is saying that reform is off the table,” Woodhouse said. “No one is saying that we don’t need health care reform.”

Mitch Stewart, director of “Organizing for America,” an offshoot of Obama’s grassroots campaign network, said that his group is trying to get people involved in the health care debate.

But the DNC organization is not taking positions on individual reform proposals.

“We are keeping our discussions generally almost at the 30,000-foot level,” said Stewart, who participated in the conference call.

Also on the call were two Northern Virginia residents who told their health care horror stories.

One of them was Alicia Brewster, who lives in Herndon. She has a full-time job, but her employer doesn’t provide insurance. So she had to seek her own coverage.

Brewster started having heart palpitations and a rapid heart rate a bit more than a year ago.

It turned out that the conditions were only the benign consequences of low blood pressure, the 27-year-old said.

But her insurance company didn’t want to cover some tests and specialist visits, and her monthly health care costs rose 60 percent.

The bills were so much that Brewster could no longer afford her one-bedroom apartment and had to move in with a friend.

She said she’s OK with a “slight increase” in taxes to fix health care so long as the increase is “reasonable.”

“At this point in time what I’m paying is not reasonable, and there’s no real control over how much they want to increase my premium,” Brewster said.

Staff writer Jonathan Hunley can be reached at 703-369-5738.