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Rep. Brad Miller had come home for the congressional recess last month hoping to work on rewriting the nation’s financial services laws, a topic he’s been involved with since his election seven years ago.

But just as lawmakers were heading home to their districts, the national debate over reforming the health care system heated up, complete with raucous town hall meetings, talk radio chatter and a steady stream of charges and countercharges over the bill.

“There’s no oxygen for anything else right now except health care,” Miller said last week in Greensboro. The Raleigh Democrat had just finished a meeting with local leaders and a Treasury Department official over financial services regulations.

Health care is getting ready to suck up more of the congressional oxygen as lawmakers return to work today. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama is scheduled to address Congress. The speech is seen as a sign that Obama will keep the health care discussion front-and-center when Congress returns.

“We believe this is the best way to kick off the final discussions, the final debate, and bring this thing to a close in a way that is meaningful,” White House senior adviser David Axelrod said last week, according to the Associated Press.

If North Carolina lawmakers are any indication, Obama will be making his case to a Congress mostly entrenched in its position and mostly divided along party lines.

“I got an earful,” Rep. Howard Coble said. The Greensboro Republican did not look kindly to Democratic proposals for health reform before the break, and the response from his constituents reinforced that notion, he said.

“Most of the constituents I represent who took the trouble to contact me...they are opposed to the current proposal on health reform,” Coble said. Sentiments ran 2-to-1 against reform proposals, he said, adding he thought the outcry would force congressional leaders to slow the pace of health reform.

Slowing down and “starting over” were themes of a health care forum Republican Sen. Richard Burr hosted in Charlotte. The forum featured Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Those who favor reform fear that “slowing down” is a back-door way of killing health care reform.

Meanwhile, in appearances throughout the state over the past three weeks, Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan has said some sort of health reform bill needs to get done. “At the end of the day, I think we’re going to have health care reform,” Hagan said in late August.

What that reform ends up looking like may change between the end of the August recess and the time any bill passes. For example, Hagan wasn’t sure whether the Senate would insist on a single “public option” provider as a way to provide health insurance to those without it or if a bill could go forward that might rely on states to provide uninsured citizens with coverage.

With the Senate legislation still in flux, much of the attention positive and negative over health reform has focused on a House version of the bill, which itself is likely to change.

“People understand that they would lose their own insurance, they’re not being fooled by what the president was saying,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, adding that she had distributed copies of the House version of the bill to libraries throughout her district.

The president, the Banner Elk Republican said, has been telling people that they could keep their existing coverage.

“That’s not what the bill says at all,” Foxx said. “The bill says all private health insurance goes away in five years.”

That’s an oversimplification of the bill’s language, according to the nonpartisan FactCheck.Org run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

After five years, employer-based health plans will have to meet certain minimum standards and some might have to change. And some employers may drop coverage and pay a penalty so their employees can buy private health coverage through a government portal or opt into the much-discussed “public option” plan.

“What we’re talking about is a set of rules for health insurance that is less strict than the rules North Carolina has for car insurance,” Miller said.

Like their Senate counterparts, North Carolina’s House Republicans seemed to have their opposition to reform efforts solidified by their time home on recess, while Democrats like Miller will return to work in Washington resolved to push a plan through this fall.

“The more I’ve studied it, the more I think the bill can work,” Miller said.
 

Reporting from the Associated Press is included.
 

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com