Health Care Reform – Plan B – Gains Support
Last Friday, nearly four dozen health care experts endorsed a strategy, which some have referred to as ‘Plan B,’ to pass health care reform: the House of Representatives should quickly pass the Senate bill. Then the House and the Senate should pass a second bill to work out differences between the two chambers on issues related to taxes and premium subsidies – which could be done through the budget reconciliation process, which is not subject to filibuster and thus only requires a 51 votes in the U.S. Senate (or 50 votes + the Vice President’s tie-breaker).
Their letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel (Chairman of the Ways & Means Committee), Henry Waxman (Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee), and George Miller (Chairman of the Education and Labor Committee) urged House leaders to take a giant step toward realization of a goal that has eluded Presidents and Congresses for nearly 75 years: making health care accessible to all Americans.
“Both houses of Congress have adopted legislation that would provide health coverage to tens of millions of Americans, begin to control health care costs that seriously threaten our economy, and improve the quality of health care for every American. These bills are imperfect. Yet they represent a huge step forward in creating a more humane, effective, and sustainable health care system for every American.
We have come further than we have ever come before. Only two steps remain. The House must adopt the Senate bill, and the President must sign it.”
The letter, noting differences between the House and Senate bills, continues:
“The House of Representatives faces a stark choice. It can enact the Senate bill, and realize the century-old dream of health care reform. . . . Differences between the House and the Senate bill can be negotiated through the reconciliation process.
Alternatively, Congress can abandon the effort at this critical moment, leaving millions more Americans to become uninsured in the coming years as health care becomes ever less affordable. Abandoning health care reform – the signature political issue of this administration – would send a message that Democrats are incapable of governing … Such a retreat would also abandon the chance to achieve reforms that millions of Americans … desperately need in these difficult times.”
Among the prominent signatories: Jacob Hacker, leading advocate of the public option; Dean Baker, at the Center for Economic and Policy Research; Paul Starr, health care historian at Princeton; and Theda Skocpol, Harvard scholar who has written a great deal on the nonprofit sector. Three signatories are from Los Angeles: Ronald Anderson at UCLA’s School of Public Health and two professors at UCLA’s School of Public Policy, Mark Kleiman and Arleen Liebowitz.
Today, HCAN – Health Care for America NOW!, which has been among the most prominent organizations advocating and organizing for health care reform legislation, endorsed Plan B. HCAN notes the role of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate as a huge obstacle to reform legislation:
“In recent years, the use of the filibuster to block legislation has skyrocketed. While it still only takes 51 votes to pass a bill in the Senate, the minority has ramped up the number of times its blocked legislation with only 41 votes. The Republican party of NO started codifying the use of the filibuster for every piece of legislation proposed by the opposing party under President Clinton. Since then, the use of the filibuster has jumped.” [Editor's note: click on the thumbnail image for a full-size view of chart].
Last week, SEIU President Andy Stern, writing in the Huffington Post (”A Path Forward: It’s Time to Pass Health Insurance Reform“) also endorsed Plan B, “Let’s not overcomplicate the process, let’s just make it happen. Because we cannot pause or take a step back – we have only one choice: move forward with real reform decisively and right now.”
Will the Democratic Congress go for Plan B? Or will it dodge responsibility and instead blame the other chamber, or the other party, or someone else for its failure to reform health care? Will one special election in Massachusetts frighten a majority – which already passed one health care bill in the House and another in the Senate, and is this close to completing the job – into running away from the issue (and from 46 million uninsured Americans) at this stage? Stay tuned.
(Chart of Cloture voting, U.S. Senate, 1947-2008, courtesy of Wikipedia.)
