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Harry Reid to write Senate health care bill
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Senator Harry Reid (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NEV) is poised to write the Senate health care bill. This is a consequence of the fact that there are two different health care bills before the Senate.
Earlier this summer the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee produced one version. Now, the Senate Finance Committee is about to produce its version. The two versions need to be combined and that duty falls on the shoulders of the Majority Leader.
This is unusual. It's the first time that Senator Reid has had to perform this task. And it won't be a simple task as there are some striking differences between the two versions of health care reform.
The HELP version is more generous regarding subsidies to low income people than the Finance Committee's version. It requires employers to offer coverage or pay a tax penalty, the Finance Committee version does not.
The Finance Committee's version includes taxes on high value insurance plans which the HELP version does not. It levies fines on employers if their employees take subsidies in order to purchase insurance.
But the biggest difference between the two bills concerns the public option. The Help version contains a public option for insurance. The Finance Committee's bill promotes Health co-ops instead.
Somehow, Senator Reid must resolve these differences and more in order to cobble together a single bill for consideration by the U.S. Senate. And since we are in a ripping hurry to get to the vote, Senator Reid has only a week or so to actually write the final bill.
It gets complicated with with every step as the need to maintain a 60 vote majority in the Senate impacts every decision. Add one feature and maybe lose a vote. Drop a feature and risk losing another vote. This is no simple task and a lot of behind the scenes arm twisting is about to occur.
If past history is any guide, this next week will see the addition of all sorts of mischief into the bill. In order to retain votes, various Senators will need to be bought off by adding bits and pieces here and there as the process goes on. This is how “bridges to nowhere” get funded. There is no reason the believe that the heath care reform bill will be any different.
When it's all said and done, the final bill will easily top 1,000 pages and be presented to the full Senate for “consideration” without allowing Senators any time to read, ponder and reflect before casting their vote. This is not representative democracy at its finest.
As of now, no one – not even Senator Reid – knows what the final bill will look like, which makes it even more important that the finished product be available for review. Unlike other legislation before Congress, health care reform is deeply personal and affects each and every one of us in a most profound manner.
Not a one of us is exempt from this bill – except, of course, our Senators and Representatives themselves. That exemption may in and of itself explain their reluctance to read the bill. Why should they when it doesn't really affect them? But the rest of us have a strong interest in the contents of this bill and deserve the right to examine it prior to its enactment.
Neither the Senate nor the House wants this to happen. Their reluctance to expose their handiwork to scrutiny before it's too late to anything about it is worrisome, to say the least.
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