Obama Proposal: Last Best Hope for Health Care Reform?
In advance of Thursday’s heralded bipartisan summit on health care, the White House has released the President’s plan to merge the House and Senate health care reform bills – making a renewed push to transform the country’s health care / health insurance system.
A new White House website, ‘Putting Americans in Control of Their Health Care,’ has links to a summary of the plan, Republican ideas in the plan, a page where Americans can ask their own questions about health care reform, and (for hard-core wonks) a link to the actual 11-page proposal [pdf] released this morning.
If the summit fails to convince Republicans to help Mr. Obama and the Democrats pass health care legislation, then it will be up to the majority party in the House and the Senate to act like a majority and pass the bill.
The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn frames the challenge in these words: “Will Democrats, particularly in the House, get past their fear and vote for the bill? Really that’s what the summit is all about–convincing nervous Democrats that the Republicans really aren’t interested in compromise and that health care reform, despite the poll numbers, is still a good idea.”
Ezra Klein’s take at his Washington Post blog is: “The election of Scott Brown threw the politics of the issue back into chaos, and unlike in past instances, left the process uncertain as well. But Democrats have spent the past few weeks rebuilding the process, and today was the first step: The press will now spend a few days covering the plan itself, rather than just the politics of the issue. Then comes Thursday’s summit, and if all goes well there, Harry Reid says that the Senate will use the reconciliation process to make a few tweaks and changes and, alongside the House, finish this bill.
That, of course, is the real plan: finish the bill.”
Igor Volsky at the Wonk Room has a rundown – including a chart – on how the President’s plan bridges the differences between the House and Senate bills.
Finally, Health Care for America Now, which has led the effort to rally Americans in support of health care reform, features Jason Rosenbaum’s observations at the NOW! Blog:
“Perhaps more significant than the proposal this morning was Pfeiffer’s comments on the strategy for passing the President’s plan:
- The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform. The proposal was designed to ensure we can get that if the opposition decides they will filibuster health reform.”
(Image is a screen grab from a video of Obama’s Weekly Address.)
