So it seems the current health care bill is dead. I was watching an explanation of reconciliation last night by Judd Gregg, and the process isn't as simple as Harry Reid pretends it to be. In order to use reconciliation it has to be for budget concerns, not policy. The dems threat was that the house would pass the current senate monstrosity as it is, then use reconciliation to change it since they'd only need 51 senate votes to do so. You cannot use reconciliation for policy changes though, only budget. This means the entire bill would be scrubbed and challenged on that basis by republicans. The dems could vote on funding changes, etc. but the policy would be removed by challenge. Mandates, preexisting conditions, etc. would be destroyed, leaving nothing but taxation and spending cuts to medicare. Not something anyone would vote for. That's why they didn't use this when they had 59 votes, because they can't.
The house members (dems) seem to feel that if the senate bill came to the floor it wouldn't get 100 votes, so this may be a mute point anyway. Obama is conceding that they may need to scale it back, pass incremental changes that are bipartisan, focus on what we actually agree on. Things like the preexisting conditions, donut holes, etc., not massive taxes and subsidies, not bribes to Nebraska, Lousiana, Florida, and the unions.
It's a massive ego hit for the White House to take, but I think it's great. We all seem to agree that the current bills are garbage, packed with incentives for the insurance industry and bribes to specific supporters, and not effective at cost controls. We may disagree on where to go from here, but at least we aren't wasting the one chance we have at effective reform by passing an unsustainable bill that doesn't solve the problems we need it too. Conservatives, not Bush style republicans, do actually have a lot to offer when it comes to containing the cost. Tort reform, interstate competition, drug company reforms, all things that Obama and the dems completely abandoned (they are heavily supported by lawyers, health insurers, and drug companies who all have their hands in shaping this to their needs) may be back on the table if we hope to come up with a compromise.
Democrats may have been saved by this election result, since they are no longer capable of such drastic overreaching. They can't write blank checks anymore and act without transparency, which the polls show has been killing their popularity. They now have checks and balances.
