Week 19: ....More Talk of a Public Plan

[SPedigrees]

In the House

In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other House leaders continued to work to merge three separate bills into one healthcare reform bill, which she hopes to have ready sometime next week.

But a number of representatives are concerned about the cost of the bill. Three dozen moderate Democrats recently sent a letter to Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) threatening to withhold their votes if the bill doesn't rein in healthcare costs.......

In her weekly press conference, Pelosi said she and her colleagues are working toward a bill that will not add "one dime to the deficit, not in the first 10 years and not in the second 10 years."

She brushed off the CMS estimate by saying that bill "doesn't even exist any more," because so many changes have been made while melding three bills into one.

In the Senate

Meanwhile, although it looked as if the final Senate bill would not contain a public option, Reid met with Pres. Obama on Thursday night to lay out his plan for including a government-run plan that would allow states to opt-out, The New York Times reported.

The bill approved last week by the Finance Committee does not include a public insurance option, but the bill reported out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee does. Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), has said the public plan wouldn't get the 60 votes necessary to pass in the Senate, because conservatives and centrists wouldn't vote in favor of it.

However, opinion polls this week showed the public is increasingly warming to the idea.

Antitrust Exemption

Pelosi also said this week that the insurance reform bill in the House will include a provision to end the antitrust exemption afforded to the insurance industry.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Washington-Watch/Washington-Watch/tb/16602