What Is The Process To Get A Healthcare Reform Bill?
My understanding of the legislative process is pretty low, but here is what is happening to the best of my understanding. Health care reform is not dead! It’s moving forward, but there is still a lot to do.
There are 5 committees working on the health care bill – 3 in the House and 2 in the Senate. The 3 House committees are the House Ways & Means Committee, the House Education & Labor Committee and the House Energy & Commerce Committee. The first two committees have passed the legislation and mark-up out of their committee. The deal-making with the Blue Dogs is happening in Waxman’s Energy & Commerce Committee. They announced a deal yesterday, so presumably the bill will come out of the committee this week. Part of the deal is that the House can’t vote on the bill until after the break (I guess the Blue Dogs want insurance companies to run more ads to make them uncomfortable). Once the bill is out of the 3 committees, it can move to the floor of the House. Nancy Pelosi says they have the votes to approve the bill, so the House shouldn’t be the big issue.
The two Senate committees working on the bill are the Senate HELP Committee (Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) and the Senate Finance Committee (Baucus’s committee). The HELP committee was the first committee to bring a bill out. The hold-up is the Baucus committee, where Baucus is holding secretive talks with Republicans who want to kill health care reform.
If you seriously want to understand what is going on with the healthcare bills, you need to follow Ezra Klein at the Washington Post. Ezra explains what is going on with the SFC:
The question is whether Baucus’s final product will matter. Rockefeller and the other Democrats on the committee have felt excluded from the negotiations and will want major changes before they can sign onto the final product. Then the Finance bill will have to be reconciled with the more liberal legislation built by the HELP Committee. Then it will have to go to the floor, where it will need the support of people like Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown just as much as it will need Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh. And then, if it passes those tests, it will have to be reconciled with the House’s legislation.
All of which is to say that the Baucus process is attracting an immense amount of interest, but the product may not look a lot like the bill that Congress eventually considers. And the reason is simple enough: Baucus’s process doesn’t look a lot like Congress. Baucus, Enzi, Snow, Grassley, Bingaman, and Conrad all think of themselves as dealmakers, but right now, they’re not cutting a deal on behalf of anyone but themselves.
What are the options? My best understanding is that the Senate could possible bypass the SFC but the SFC controls the medicaid funding, so that would not be included in the bill if it is bypassed. Harry Reid and the Senate leadership will have to decide what to do if the SFC can’t come out with some kind of bill. Enzi is trying to kill the full bill, by trying to force Reid into signing some kind of promise that the final bill will be the SFC bill (which many Democrats have vowed not to vote for if there’s no public option). I doubt that’s going to happen. Reid needs to show some leadership here, to make sure that the bill isn’t killed in the Senate. He has 60 senators, use that. I don’t care what kind of carrots and sticks he uses (I hope it’s big sticks), he needs to get it done.
For some reason, the media seems to be caught up in the day-to-day drama of the committee work instead of explaining the process to people. It’s almost like *gasp* the media is in the tank for killing health care reform.
Again, what I’ve described is to the best of my understanding. Please correct me below if I’ve gotten something wrong.
Tags: Ezra Klein, Health Care Reform
Aside from the structure of the committee until there is a plan to finance the bill, it will go nowhere. As soon as you publish the means of paying for this massive expansion the many committees will have at least 10 different coalitions will have a voice.
The end run is Obama will have to do massive cost shifting tricks to make the public option acceptable. Hospitals will essentially take on the role of being a public utility because of the role of government dictates on prices.
Back to your question, Baucus is the key. Reid is up or reelection next year and he will cover his butt before he hammers anyone.
Mike Protack
Funny how the Republicans suddenly worry about “spending” after the blew the Clinton adm. surplus and brought us the worst deficit .
There is only one answer to the Health problem and the Dem’s we all sent to congress and gave them control of both houses haven’t got the balls to do it and that is Single Payer. Now that’s what all of us thought was ment by REAL CHANGE.Let down again just like 1992 so whats new here
move over posers, the real commies are on the case:
No vacation for Congress
People’s Weekly World Newspaper, 07/28/09 17:23
It is a disgrace that Congress is leaving the nation’s capital for summer vacation as the American people are left to deal with a healthcare crisis that has exploded into a national emergency.
For each day lawmakers go fishing, 14,000 more will lose their coverage.
For each day they play golf 17,000 more of the people they are supposed to be working for go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills.
At the end of this week House members high tail it out of town to be followed a week later by the Senate. They won’t be back until Sept. 8.
While the government “of, by and for the people” shuts down without having met President Obama’s original deadline for action on health care they give more time to the Republicans and their conservative Democratic friends to delay and obstruct meaningful reform. They give more time to the lobbyists to perpetrate the scare tactics designed to enrich the insurance companies, the big pharmaceutical companies and the private health care industry as a whole at the expense of the people. They give more time to pressure lawmakers sitting on the fence into selling out the people on the public option and tax the rich portions of HR 3200, the progressive bill that emerged from a key House committee.
Progressives are having their day. They will hold committee meetings on the Hill tomorrow…and if there is no public option, they will not support anything. 87 are signed up to the Single Payer bill HR676! They will never vote for that co-op crap the Blue Dawgs put out…it will cost as much as $600 million to get a co-op started. No where in the world is there such a system! Its just another ruse to keep the greedy pigs stealing our health care dollars, feeding the fatcat CEO’s and their shareholders. Senator Sanders said, “many in the Congress have stock in the companies they are now trying to reform”. How does this all work in a democracy? HR 3200 will be dead on arrival, there are simply not enough votes to get that crap through.
HR 3200 is not the Progressive bill, its the Blue Dog bill.
Physicans for National Care (PNHP.org) held a rally and press conference in DC today. You can see a variety of articles on the issue by going to their website. “Why Obamas Public Option is Defective, and why we Need Single Payer”! PNHPers have appeared on Steven Colbert (he is our ambassador), Fox, Christian Broadcasting Network, CNN, Democracy Now and the Ed Schultz show on MSNBC.
The Weiner Amendment has not been introduced yet due to a procedural delay in the Energy/Commerce Committee. Also, today the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Alan Brett article: “American Values-A smoke screen in the debate on Health care Reform”, 3,793 doctors/residents signed an Open Letter to Obama, delivered by Dr. Scheiner stating why mandate plans will not work, and why single payer, Medicare for ALL, is All we need.
Go to: PNHP.org and read the documents yourself. It aint over baby.
You can’t make this crap up. Senator Rockefeller on Ed Schultz show discussing the Blue Dog Co-op Plan. First they couldnt even find one, then discovered two. One in Puget Sound and one in Minnesota. They are unlicensed, unregulated and untested! The Co-op Plan is dead on arrival. Do the Blue Dogs want to sell this “pig in a poke” to the american people as health care reform. I was wrong about the $600M for a co-op startup~~its actually $600 billion!!! More wasted health care dollars and no competition to the for profit hogs!
Anyone know where we can actually read the bills?
Anyone know where we can actually read the bills?
There are many versions of the bill. I’m not even sure I have them all with this list:
Senate:
(find links on this page to the current bill and markups):
http://help.senate.gov/
House:
Currently being marked up by Energy and Commerce:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.html?option=com_content&view=article&id=1687&catid=156&Itemid=55
As passed by EdLabor Committee (find the link on the page):
http://edlabor.house.gov/blog/2009/07/americas-affordable-health-choices-act.shtml
As passed by Ways and Means:
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/legis.asp?formmode=item&number=687
HR3200 via Thomas:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.111hr3200
Anyone know where we can actually read the bills?
Useful response to this question is in moderation tarpit due to links…
It saddens me that our government can not work as a team for we are one country. How can we make this country better for ourselves if we can’t get along and compromise with what is right or wrong. I would love to see some kind of health care reform that would make both parties happy. Instead of trying find something that works for both; I am seeing that one party is only willing to do either that will take care of all peoples of this country whether poor or rich. I know there is a happy medium; but I feel that know one is looking for that. It’s all about what Replicans or Democrats want not what the people really need. Shame on us. We are a democracy; at least I thought we were. What happen to our country that it is in such disaray. What happen to justice for all. We are one country why have two parties? We are all working to achieve what is best for our country and people; at least I would hope. Shame, shame on us.
tom s. is actually gonna reedz somedin?