Having watched some of the highlights of the President’s Health Care forum, I’m beginning to think that reconciliation is back on the table. I blogged about the future of Healthcare reform the night that Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate race. I covered the reconciliation process as option #3 in that blog post and gave it a 40% chance of ocurring.
Subsequent to that, the House Leadership came out and said that they didn’t have the votes to pass the Senate bill which would be a necessary first step in passing HCR in this manner. Now it seems that this option is gaining favor. My Option #4 was “Healthcare Reform is Dead” which I also handicapped with a 40% probability.
Now, it seems, as the Democratic leadership looks at these two options (Budget Reconciliation or Nothing), they are giving Reconciliation a harder look.
I believe the democrats will do exactly what Obama said during the mid-day break to vote. He told a reporter “democrats are prepared to take this all the way” and “the future elections will judge the outcome”. It is my prediction at this point I give reconciliation option 80%. If I were a democrat (and I’m obviously not) it’s what I would do. Let’s face it I’m down in the polls now. If the past election/ races are any indication as to how the public will vote in the near future; what do I have to loose.
I want express my disappointment in todays Republican responses- I think they missed a clear opportunity to put at least some substantitive input on the present bill. I think the president through them some bones. They should have fought to get those bones added and even if they didn’t vote for the bill in the end; they would at least be in there.
I believe perfect tv time in front of a lot of people was just plain wasted on finger pointing when they could have hit some fixes to the bill and got something done.
I believe it will pass and the onlything we can hope for at this point is that elections change parties and some of the crap in this bill is fixed before it starts.