"We understand. We've read all the different positions in the Senate," said Miller. "We've had discussions back and forth, but we continue to believe this is an important, important component of real health care reform."
The three committees will hold hearings on the bill next week, with the hope of bringing it to the floor the week after the July 4th recess.
Senate Democrats have been set back by higher-than-expected cost estimates that have come back from the Congressional Budget Office, although the Senate plans were submitted without the public option, which is intended to reduce costs in the long run.
The House version will be expensive. It includes an effort to close the so-called "doughnut hole" in Medicare prescription drug coverage, which would be costly but would go a long way toward obtaining the support of seniors, who are less inclined to back a public option, according to a recent poll. They already have a public plan.
Doctors, too, get a wet kiss in the plan from Democrats, a proposal to permanently fix the "sustainable growth rate" payment system. The current public reimbursement system requires doctors to continuously lobby Congress to prevent automatic rate cuts. Members of Congress fill their coffers as a result of that lobbying and have never let the threat of a rate cut take effect. So, in effect, permanently fixing it won't cost more money but the budget office, which pretends the fix won't be made each year, will count it as an expensive provision. (Got that?)
The move by the House Friday was an effort to reassert itself. "I'm only speaking for the House. We feel very good about this," Miller told HuffPost after the presser.
Waxman dismissed the Senate fumbling. "I'm not getting alarmed by the legislative process," he said. "The Senate Finance Committee can't pass a bill into law without us. We can't pass one without the Senate. And we can't, either of us, do it together without the president."
Ultimately, the final negotiations will go on in a conference committee between the two chambers, and Miller said his body hopes to take the fight there. "We hope to take it to conference committee," he said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/19/house-democratsanxious-to_n_218177.html?view=printOh, but we're so doomed. We might as well give up. Health care reform will never happen. I hate Democrats and Obama, who is just like Bush. (for the sarcasm impaired, this is sarcasm)
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