WASHINGTON — John Peeler, an unemployed computer technician in South Carolina, may soon get health insurance for his wife and three children. Four months after being laid off, he is one of the lucky jobless Americans who could receive thousands of dollars in government subsidies from the new stimulus plan.
Susan McKowen, a 62-year-old breast cancer survivor from Illinois, is not so fortunate. Though she too lost her job in the current economic crisis, she won't be getting help with health insurance under the new law.
When President Obama and his allies pulled together the $787-billion bill that he is to sign today, they talked about helping workers like Peeler, McKowen and others rapidly swelling the ranks of America's more than 46 million uninsured.
But in the scramble to pass a bill, lawmakers made changes that left out millions of middle-class Americans who have lost their jobs and are struggling to fill a prescription or pay for a visit to the doctor.
That reflected a frenzied process in which sometimes arbitrary decisions were made to speed agreements and satisfy a dizzying array of political interest groups working to influence the massive bill.
During last-minute negotiating, provisions were cut that would have opened the government-run Medicaid insurance program to the unemployed, a move opposed by more conservative lawmakers.
Another provision to allow older jobless workers like McKowen to keep their employer-based coverage until they qualified for Medicare was eliminated amid opposition from business groups.
Even the rules governing which workers were eligible for aid were picked on the fly, officials acknowledged. Sensitive to businesses' concerns, senior Democrats decided to give health insurance subsidies only to workers who lost their jobs after September, even though the recession began nearly a year earlier.
That means Peeler, who was laid off in November, is eligible for assistance; McKowen, laid off 13 months ago when the recession was starting, is not.
"It's just a matter of trying to balance interests and hold the line on spending," said Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a centrist Democrat who helped negotiate the compromise that narrowly cleared the Senate.
Despite the cuts, the aid package represents one of the largest federal investments in healthcare in history, totaling more than $147 billion, or nearly a fifth of the bill.
