House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just released the health care reform bill she will introduce on the floor, in hopes of a final vote in the next week to ten days. You can read the text here. And while it will take a while to wade through all of the details--and uncover the inevitable surprises--we already have a pretty good idea of the basics, based on published reports and several House sources.
Like the bills that passed three House committees in the summer, this one will cover more people--and provide them with more protection--than the emerging counterpart in the Senate.
It will also include a stronger public insurance option, but one that is not as strong as it could be. In particular, the public plan will have to negotiate payment rates with providers in just the way private insurers do. This is in lieu of tying the plan's rates to Medicare. Although Pelosi and her allies tried, they were ultimately unable to round up the votes for that strong a measure.
(Note that, as in the Senate, the public option would be available only to individuals without access to employer-sponsored insurance. If you want to do something about that, though, you'll have to talk to Ron Wyden.)
For all of the talk about a public plan, the primary imperative for architects of the House plan was to change the bottom line. The original House bill paid for itself over the course of ten years, but in a way that began generating deficits in year eleven. It also included an adjustment to physician fees--what's come to be known as the "doc fix"--worth some $240 billion over ten years, that lacked financing of its own and pushed the bill's entire price tag to well over $1 trillion.
WASHINGTON--Is there room in the Republican Party for genuine moderates? Truth to tell, the GOP can't decide. More precisely, it's deeply divided over whether it should allow any divisions in the party at all.
That's why the brawl in a single congressional district in far upstate New York is drawing the eyes of the nation. Conservatives are determined to use the race to prove that there is no place in the party for heretics, dissidents or independents.
Armed with favorable cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and emboldened, perhaps, by the self-destructive behavior of the health insurance lobby, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to propose that her caucus unite behind a reform bill with a strong public insurance option. She will do so at a Wednesday meeting of House Democrats, according to The Hill's Mike Soraghan, who was (I think) the first to report the story.
Pelosi's actions have provoked two very different reactions from within the reform community: Glee and fear.
The glee comes from people who think Pelosi is making a smart strategic move. Yes, a strong public plan remains a tough sell, particularly with centrists in the Senate. But precisely because the Senate will pull the bill to the right, it's critical that Pelosi pull it to the left while she can. The public option is gaining momentum right now, thanks to strong polling numbers and a realization, among members, that requiring people to get insurance is a bad idea if the available insurance options aren't very good.
In a piece largely about next month's congressional election in New York's 23rd district, The Wall Street Journal's Naftali Bendavid echoes and enlarges upon some of the points I made in a blog post about the electoral dangers the tea-party movement could present for the GOP:
In Florida, Republican leaders were elated when popular Florida Gov. Charlie Crist agreed to run for the Senate. He has adopted policies such as an aggressive approach to global warming that appeal even to Democrats. Those very policies infuriated conservatives, as did Mr. Crist's decision to campaign with President Barack Obama on behalf of the president's $787 billion stimulus package.... Mr. Crist has drawn a primary challenge from Marco Rubio, a former Florida House speaker, who is aggressively seeking tea-party members' support.
The GOP scored another potential coup when Republican Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk decided to seek Mr. Obama's former Senate seat, now held by Democratic Sen. Roland Burris. Mr. Kirk, however, voted for a Democratic climate-change bill in the House, prompting about 30 people to hold a tea-party protest at his office. Many activists vow never to support him.
In New Hampshire, Republican leaders praise Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte as a new breed of telegenic Republican, even while some conservatives attack her record as state attorney general. Former Rep. Rob Simmons, who is seeking a Senate seat in Connecticut, and Rep. Mike Castle, who just announced his Senate candidacy in Delaware, face similar scorn.
Democrats habitually tell themselves that Republicans are the ones who forfeit the public trust, perhaps by dint of character. And there are so many cases of members of Congress (and appointees in the executive branch) who want that Grand Old Party to be a grand old party only for themselves that this partisan skewing of the corrupt seems almost plausible.
But it is not. This endemic corruption is, in fact, perhaps the one part of public life that is truly and lastingly bipartisan.
Speculation as to who will succeed Ted Kennedy is proceeding apace, with his nephew, former Congressman Joseph Kennedy II, the likely frontrunner in the January 19 special election. The eldest son of Robert Kennedy, Joe held the House seat once occupied by his uncle John and House Speaker Tip O’Neill, representing Boston from 1987 until 1999.
When Sarah Palin abruptly announced that she was planning to leave office, it was clear whom she blamed for her early exit. “I wish you'd hear MORE from the media of your state’s progress and how we tackle Outside interests--daily--SPECIAL interests that would stymie our state,” she said in her July 3 resignation speech, which she later posted on her website.
Norwalk, Connecticut
On Monday, Nancy Pelosi made an announcement that was buried amid the tumult over the Steny Hoyer-Jack Murtha battle for House majority leader. It was the appointment of Representative Michael Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat, to be the head of Pelosi's "transition team" as she assumes the job of House speaker.
"Who's that gray-haired guy in there with the monkeys and the Kennedy?"
