Tomorrow at 10 a.m., the House Democratic leadership unveil their health care bill. It is highly likely that it will include a public option with negotiated rates, rather than the more robust public option tied to Medicare (+5%) rates. There are many other details of the plan to discuss, but for now I will wait until the bill is actually unveiled to discuss them.
The remaining barriers to passage of the health care bill in the House are two-fold:
Bart Stupak's Regressive Block. Representative Bart Stupak is still looking to round-up forty votes to prevent he bill from going to the floor unless abortions are not covered under all health care plans that receive subsidies in the new insurance exchanges.
The leadership is convinced that if Stupak is able to offer an amendment to that affect on the House floor, that it will pass. If the amendment passes, it will kill the entire bill, because dozens of pro-choice Democratic votes would be lost. As such, the leadership will not allow any amendments to the health care bill on the floor. This means that once the bill hits the floor, that is the bill that will go to conference committee.
The Tri-Caucus Progressive Block. For months, the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus and Hispanic Caucus (and, I think, the Asian-American Caucus) have been trying to round up House Democrats who would vote against a health care bill unless it included the Medicare +5% option. Now that the bill will not include the Medicare +5% public option, the tri-caucus is sounding noncommittal about the bill. They are also meeting with President Obama tomorrow:
Some liberals were prepared to accept the negotiated rate structure. Others were still withholding support, even while pointing to Reid's inclusion of a government insurance plan in the Senate bill as a victory in itself.
"We were laughed at in August. Who would have thought that the Senate bill would have a public option?" said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Woolsey was noncommittal about whether progressives would accept the negotiated rates. "This is not walkaway time and it is not acceptance time," Woolsey said.
Members of the progressive caucus, along with lawmakers from the black and Hispanic caucuses, were scheduled to meet with Obama at the White House on Thursday, she said.
The Tri-Caucus does not appear to have won this time, but they do seem to have improved at playing the influence game. Threaten to vote against a must-pass bill, withhold your support even after a deal is apparently reached, and viola! You end up with a meeting at the White House. Not bad for a caucus that was the last to meet with President Obama at the start of his term.
Given both the Progressive and Regressive blocs, the passage of any bill will be by a narrow margin. No matter the disproportionate attention the Senate has received, there has always been just as much drama in the House.
