The Coming Battle For Healthcare Reform

There are two sources for this article, one in today’s Washington Examiner, and one in today’s Washington Times

The Washington Examiner article deals with the fact that the healthcare reform bill has been rejected by the American people.  Most of us find the idea that we can give every American health insurance while spending less money than we do now a little unbelievable.  Democrat Jay Rockefeller, in referring to Presient Obama’s policies on ‘clean coal’, stated, “He’s beginning to not be believable to me.”

The current conventional wisdom says that President Obama will use the reconcilliation process to pass a totally Democrat healthcare reform bill.  The Republicans are being invited to a very public meeting on Thursday to provide cover for this effort.  Passing healthcare reform with less than sixty votes by using parliamentary trickery is not likely to impress the American voters.  It will probably cost many Democrats who vote for the plan their seats in November.

The Washington Times article points out that the Republicans do have an alternative healthcare reform plan:

“Republicans, however, have devised a creative way around this vexing dilemma that would simultaneously decelerate the fiscal deficits and health care costs while improving care. It’s contained in the Patients’ Choice Act, co-sponsored by Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Republican Reps. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Devin Nunes of California. Specifically, their Medicaid transformation would save the states and federal government $1 trillion and $300 million, respectively while gutting the current third-rate system in favor of one that delivers first-class, stigma-free care and develops a template for outcomes-based care that essentially would serve as a laboratory to provide the health care system at large the keys to successful structural reform by which to bend down that vaunted cost curve.”

Hopefully, because the cameras will be rolling, Republican ideas will also have a seat at the table.