"The Bill That Won't Die"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“The Bill That Won’t Die”

March 1, 2010

The health care summit has come and gone and did little to reconcile the differences between health care proposals of Democrats and Republicans, though reconciliation may well be the result.

If the President hoped to achieve bipartisanship, he was disappointed. If he wanted to showcase that his is the Party of action and that Republicans were the Party of “no”, he did not succeed, as Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin well articulated the Republican’s position and urged the President to start with a clean slate. The President, with 13 months and a 2700 page Bill behind him, declined. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi concurred: “We don’t have time to start over.” If Mr. Obama wanted to demonstrate that he was the President, he succeeded, as he so informed Senator McCain who he accused of continuing to campaign for a race he had already lost.

The positions held by Democrats, as Peggy Noonan wrote in the weekend’s Wall Street Journal, “started out hardened and likely ended so. Good faith and generosity did not flourish.” If anything, Democrats, according to Saturday’s New York Times, “confirmed their belief it was futile to try to work with Republicans on a major health care bill because the philosophical differences between the Parties were too profound.”

Nevertheless, the President urged Democrats to press ahead. Taking her cue, Mrs. Pelosi on Friday said: “I believe we have good prospects for passing legislation.” Our health care analyst, Avik Roy, pointed out that reconciliation can only modify a current law, which means that the House must pass the Senate version, without modification. He continues to believe that comprehensive legislation will fail to clear Congress.

The President began the conference by mentioning the one area with which there is agreement – the rising costs of health care must be halted. Reed Abelson in Sunday’s New York Times wrote: “…health policy analysts and economists of nearly every ideological persuasion agree. The unrelenting rise in medical costs is likely to wreck havoc within the system and beyond it, and pretty much everyone will be affected, directly or indirectly.”

should the current bill fail, some feel that lawmakers may focus on a series of smaller fixes. Mr. Abelson quotes Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation as suggesting that Congress may focus on more narrow areas such as insurance regulation, or another expansion of Medicaid.

However, the essence of the differences between the two parties remains. The President and Democrats are intent on government programs and tighter regulation, while the Republicans, as reported by Grace-Marie Turner, “…believe in providing incentives for more competition, consumer choice and transparency to force changes in the market place.” Edward Luce, writing in the weekend’s edition of the Financial Times is simply wrong when he writes: “Republicans still abhor any attempt to overhaul America’s health care system.”

In terms of solutions to the health care problem, the difference between the Parties is crystallizing. Democrats believe the answer lies with increasing government’s reach, while Republicans believe the answer lies in giving the consumer a greater say, transparency and more competition. Bringing 16-17% of the economy under the government’s purview is no trifling matter. We are at a significant junction; one way leads left, the other, right.

The Democrats’ version of health care reform, which appears to be in need of intensive care, has not yet died. The President will speak mid-week about a “way forward”; Nancy Pelosi cannot be underestimated and she may well find the votes in the House to pass the Senate version of health care. If she does, the President will sign it and it will become law.

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I will be out the balance of the week, skiing with a few of my siblings at Sunapee in New Hampshire, a place I first skied fifty seven years ago.