Pelosi’s Plan to Pass Health Care Reform
Despite President Obama’s recent rhetoric about reaching out to Republicans and getting their input on health care reform, a sneaky plan is underway to pass health care without any help from Republicans. Wendell Primus, the top health care adviser to Nancy Pelosi, believes it can be passed by Easter. If I’m understanding the complicated and tricky plan correctly, the House would pass the Senate bill, Obama would sign the Senate bill, then the House would pass another bill changing the Senate version. According to Anna Edney of CongressDaily,
House Speaker Pelosi’s top healthcare adviser today outlined a plan that would allow both chambers to make changes to the Senate healthcare overhaul before the overhaul becomes law.
Wendell Primus said the plan is to have President Obama sign the Senate bill before signing the legislation making the changes, even though Congress will approve them in reverse to satisfy skeptical House members who refuse to pass the Senate bill before changes are made.
“The trick in all of this is that the president would have to sign the Senate bill first, then the reconciliation bill second, and the reconciliation bill would trump the Senate bill,” Wendell Primus, told health policy experts gathered at the National Health Policy Conference hosted by AcademyHealth and Health Affairs.
Some have questioned whether rules would allow Congress to pass changes to a bill that is not yet law. House members have insisted both chambers approve the changes, which likely will go through the reconciliation process to require 51 votes rather than the 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, before they pass they Senate bill.
[snip]
Negotiators first must agree on changes.
The Senate parliamentarian still needs to weigh in, he added.
Despite all these complications, Primus said, lawmakers will be “very close to being done” with an overhaul by Easter recess.
The 2000 plus page health care bill does not appear to be dead as most of us had hoped. I’m not sure if this whole process can be pulled off or even if it is legal, but it does show how desperate Progressives like Pelosi are to have a government takeover of our health care system.
