President Obama announced the White House Plan for HCR this AM and, as promised, it is up on the web.
The Wonk Room is fast out of the gate with a good summary:
The Obama plan maintains key elements of the Senate proposal but also incorporates stronger anti-fraud provisions and allows the federal government to review insurance rate hikes. On a call with reporters Pfeiffer insisted that the administration has not determined “on which path to move forward with”, but the bill’s substance suggests that Obama is hoping to bypass a prolonged-Senate debate and use the reconciliation process to fix the Senate bill and convince reluctant House progressives to pass the Senate legislation. “The American people deserve up or down vote on health reform,”Pfeiffer said. “We can get an up or down vote if opposition decides to take extraordinary steps of filibustering health reforms.”
They did a nice comparison of the WH, House and Senate Plans too, if you scroll down the Wonk Room article. Just looking at this summary, it looks as though the elimination of the anti-trust exemption is not here.
Greg Sargent of the Plum Line has some more, mainly that the WH won’t object to the Public Option being passed via reconciliation if there are the votes for it. But there is more on the new and much needed demand for an “up or down” vote on HCR:
Pfeiffer said no decision had been made how to proceed, pending the outcome of the summit. But he added that Obama’s proposal is designed to have “maximum flexibility to ensure that we can get an up or down vote if the opposition decides to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform.”
Translation: If the GOP doesn’t cooperate with us in any meaningful sense, we’re moving forward on our own.
So the Public Option needs enough votes to pass in reconciliation and reconciliation is on.
More as we get it!