This Week In Health Care Reform

The CBO scoring for the Senate health care reform bill could come back as soon as today. Once the CBO weighs in, the debate on the bill can start in the Senate. Right now the schedule has the bill ready for a vote around Christmas. The Republicans have been promising to do everything possible to slow down debate but Democrats have a plan to deal with this:

Harkin, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Democrats have mischief planned for the Republicans if they do that type of obstruction.

“If the Republicans want to stay here this Saturday and Sunday to read the bill, then let them stay here,” he said. “We are planning to do something that would require Republicans to be there 24 hours a day, and if they leave the floor, we’ll ask unanimous consent to dispense with the reading, and that’ll be the end of it.”

Health care reform opposition is not going well for Republicans in other areas. An influential group called the Business Roundtable released a report that showed health care reform will save businesses an average of $3000/employee. So much for that job-killing talking point, eh?

Republicans in Congress and some of their business allies in Washington are fuming over a new report commissioned by the Business Roundtable (BRT), an organization that represents more than 50 of the nation’s biggest corporations.

The report claims that parts of the Democratic legislation could cut healthcare costs substantially.

Obama on Thursday seized on the findings, issuing a statement that notes the report found future healthcare costs could fall by $3,000 per employee with passage of the legislation.

The report was released two weeks after Senate Republicans voiced frustration with the CEOs for not doing more to oppose Democratic healthcare proposals, prompting more criticism from the party that traditionally is aligned with the top executives.

The Republicans have a plan though – they’ll produce their own study. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is looking for an economist to support their pre-conceived conclusions. Sounds like easy work to me.

The Chamber of Commerce recently blasted out a fundraising e-mail to its member groups asking for $50,000 to hire a “respected economist” to study the health-care bills. Seems sensible enough. Knowledge is power, and all that. But then, as Michael Shear reports, comes step two:

“The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document.”