Down the Homestretch for Health Reform
August was a long month of rowdy town hall meetings and outrageous rumors and attacks aimed at killing comprehensive health reform. But now it’s September. With his powerful speech to a joint session of Congress and vigorous personal advocacy, the President has turned the momentum and refocused the effort to pass a good bill. Polling shows strong, consistent public support. At long last the final one of the five congressional committees with jurisdiction, the Senate Finance Committee, has begun to mark up a bill. Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the committee's chair, released his version of a bill last week (known as "the chairman's mark" and normally accorded much deference by committee members of his own party). The Finance Committee will consider many amendments, and then pass a bill. All the other committees did their work before August.
The process is entering its homestretch. The Senate Finance Committee will complete its work in the next week or two, possibly improving on Baucus' suggested version. Then the Senate will need to reconcile that bill with the one passed by the health committee (called the HELP Committee, which was Sen. Kennedy's committee, now chaired by Sen. Harkin) and then pass it on the floor. The three House committees with jurisdiction have already reconciled their versions into one bill. It needs a floor vote. After both chambers pass bills, there will be a conference to reconcile the two bills, and then the conferenced version will go back to both floors for passage, at which point it will go to the President for signature.
In general, the Baucus proposal provides the "conservative" bookend of the coming debate, and the House and Senate HELP bills, which are similar, provide the other bookend. The Finance Committee, Senate reconciliation, and Senate-House conference are all points at which the whole proposal can be move one direction or another on the many issues within the package. To help understand what is being negotiated and decided, we will publish six blogs that summarize the major categories of issues and where the lines are being drawn on them. We will cover:
· Children's coverage
· Low-income coverage under Medicaid
· Affordability, subsidies and the individual mandate
· The Exchange and the public option
· Health insurance reforms and health care cost controls
· Paying for it and the impact on the deficit
The first one -- "Children's Coverage -- Do no Harm!" is also published today. If these blogs move you to reach out to your delegation in both houses of Congress, you can find the contact information HERE.
