Baucus bill passes. Now what?

By Jose A Ibarra

“A deficit neutral bill shouldn't be the end to our means.
Congress needs to live up to their promise and provide a bill
that both lowers costs and makes insurance available to all.”

So it's all come down to this.

The months and months of work, of compromising, and of harsh rhetoric from both sides of the political spectrum all come down to these coming weeks in which the true nature of this health care bill will be decided.

It seems those in control have decidedly come to the conclusion that a public option within the bill makes it impassable, and to greater outrage, those same people hope to just meet the pre-requisites they set themselves for in the bill as a simply deficit neutral bill; as the reconciliation process requires and is pretty much implicit by the nature of the bill.

What we have here is an incredibly complex process for an extremely difficult problem.

We have of course many other hurdles to overcome besides this bill getting out of committee, but the reality of what needs to be done keeps its shadow over all the key players in this thing, and the hope for a bill that will truly be effective in fulfilling the White House's promises for cost reduction seems to fade just a little bit more with every day that passes.

The bill having gotten out of committee and with true deliberations now beginning, it should be a foregone conclusion that a deficit neutral bill shouldn't be the end to our means. Congress needs to live up to their promise and provide a bill that both lowers costs and makes insurance available to all.

It seems incredible that the bill is still being debated in its current form immediately following a report from insurance companies that state the Baucus bill isn't enough to prevent premiums from increasing related to the requirement of having to cover pre-existing conditions. It seems even more incredible that like many have said, this report is actually the best argument for a public option whether or not the report was done haphazardly.

So where do we go from here?

Reconciliation is still on the table, but the process would make Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi wish democrats weren't in the majority.

However, reconciliation still allows us to do the most with less resources and a much lower hurdles to overcome. A public option would be passable under reconciliation as long as it's restructured to be a necessity in budget spending. It would allow us to mesh bills from the finance committee and the health committee in a very effective way and bring about the type of changes that will truly make a difference in lowering costs.

However, the biggest reality check we get in all this is that unless the whole deal that dems have with Senator Snowe falls apart, then the Baucus bill will inevitably become law without any true mechanism to significantly lower costs. Lowering the deficit over ten years by $49 billion dollars seems a tad bit optimistic for the Baucus bill, although the Congressional Budget Office's tends to err on the conservative side.

So really now, where do we go from here?

It's hard to really say. The public option is not dead but on its last throes unless the Baucus bill dies, which is unlikely.

Can the democratic congress add a public option later? Yes, but it will be futile considering the make up of the Senate will change within a few months time and the biggest thing preventing any bill from passing is the 60 vote cloture rule in the Senate which forces debate on a bill to end and allows for a vote to take place.

It will truly be up to Harry Reid to decide where to take this bill. He can either bring this Baucus bill to the floor, open to cheese grating that will be done by republican amendments only to have nearly or 100% of republicans strike down the bill, or he can pull a political magic trick and maneuver the bill into it looking like a dead bill that has no chance of passage and get the process of reconciliation going with the public option as a starter and making sure most if not all amendments are already in place before the bill begins to be debated as part of reconciliation. We know the liability this will be for many democrats, but America doesn't need a watered down health care bill and it surely doesn't need its legislators to stand down on one of the biggest pieces of legislation they will ever vote on for fear of not being re-elected.

We already know what the White House wants and what the congress expects, maybe for once we can have a confident democratic leadership and a confident congress to actually get the best and most effective bill passed whether or not it's at the expense of republicans and the loss of a few democratic seats to republicans.

We'll just have to see.