HELP Committee Circulates Health Care Legislation--Public Option And All
Fast on the good news from the Congressional Budget Office, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has circulated its finalized language on the two key issues that had slowed progress on its health care reform bill to a crawl: The public option and the employer mandate. You can see the new language of the bill--if that sort of thing appeals to you--here (PDF).
HELP chairman Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and his chief deputy Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) sent a letter to committee colleague touting the provisions and urging them to support the full bill. You can read that letter here.
One reason for the delay has been the objections of Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC). I have a call out to her office to see if she's now on board with the public option.
Late update: Committee leaders seem confident that every Democrat will vote to move the bill forward. That would include Sen. Hagan.
Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
Will Repubs stand behind their original statements from the first CBO scorecard that didn't include the public option?
July 2, 2009 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Apparently all members of HELP are backing this bill: http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2009/07/02/all-13-democrats-are-voting-for-the-help-committee-bill/
July 2, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
This great news
FOR McConnnel and Grassley!
Seriously, HELP has come to the rescue in the nick of time and while I doubt this will be enough to overcome a filibuster against public option legislation in the Senate it does present some interesting tactical possibilities for improving whatever eventually emerges from the Senate and most critically out of conference
First it puts pressure on the Big Insurance, Big Pharma Dems and the Finance Committee to produce something closer to meaningful reform
Second, it sets up a situation where rather than offering the HELP bill as a substitute for the Finance Committee bill on a straight vote, the HELP bill could be brought to the floor directly and a cloture motion filed. I suspect that it would get a couple more votes for cloture than it would as a substitute and along with any other improving amendments to the finance bill present a much more favorable situation when the Conference meets to resolve the Senate product with the House Public Option legislation
Put another way, it sets up a situation where if the Insurance Block in the Senate wants to block the Public Option, it must do so by way of filibuster of the Conference Report
Or have I overthought?
July 2, 2009 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink