House Speaker Pelosi's top healthcare adviser today outlined a plan that would allow both chambers to make changes to the Senate healthcare overhaul before the overhaul becomes law.
Wendell Primus said the plan is to have President Obama sign the Senate bill before signing the legislation making the changes, even though Congress will approve them in reverse to satisfy skeptical House members who refuse to pass the Senate bill before changes are made.
"The trick in all of this is that the president would have to sign the Senate bill first, then the reconciliation bill second, and the reconciliation bill would trump the Senate bill," Wendell Primus, told health policy experts gathered at the National Health Policy Conference hosted by AcademyHealth and Health Affairs.
So why wait any longer? Is Harry Reid paying attention? And more importantly, is President Obama paying attention?
A new WaPo poll shows that nearly 2/3 of Americans want health care reform done this year. So why not just get it done and get it done right?
By the way, another independent study shows that reconciliation can be used to pass health care reform. So yet again, why the wait? Get health care done, get it done right, and use reconciliation if necessary.
The Senate bill has the desires of the drug and insurance industry that the House bill won't have. Obama set up the deals with PHrMA and AHIP and wants to see those through. Which is why OFA and HCAN is sending out a lot of "pass health reform NOW!" emails to activists who have no interest in big giveaways to these industries.
ReplyDeleteThe House wants a weaksauce public option, the Senate wants none, and Obama wants to keep his promises to Big Drugs and Big Insurance.
Thus why Obama's propaganda arm is doing a nowNowNOW thing. The House doesn't want to pass the Senate bill, because their constituents don't want them to, so OFA/HCAN are now going on about how there's no other choice but to pass this because "the Senate doesn't have the votes for [insert any other alternative here]"