The Prospects of Health Care Reform

A lot has happened since my last post on health care. President Obama held his bipartisan summit, Anthem raised their rates by as much as 39% in California, and Obama, Reid and Pelosi came out in favor of using reconciliation to pass health care reform. Given these developments, what are the prospects of Democrats passing health care reform? I think the probability is higher than 50%. The main obstacles now lie not in the Senate but in the House.

Many of the Senators I mentioned in my post a month ago have come out in favor of using reconciliation. President Obama almost certainly has 50 Senators that will vote for his bill (despite the defection of Senator Blanche Lincoln’s (D-AK) in the face of a difficult election this November). Does he have a majority in the House? The House health care reform bill passed 220-215. If we assume that the bill the White House aims to pass is the one released by Obama prior to the bipartisan health care summit, then the White House could face serious difficulties gathering this majority.

Progressives will undoubtedly be angry at the lack of a public option and the inclusion of the excise tax on high-cost health care plans (even though the tax was moved down the road to 2018). Conservative democrats are likely to bristle because Obama declined to include the Stupak Amendment restricting what government money could go to fund abortions. Given these challenges, why do I think the chance of reform is higher than 50%? In the end, I predict that both progressives and moderates will realize that the political benefits of passing reform outweigh the negatives. Progressives will see that this bill is better than no bill. Some moderates are rethinking their “no” votes because the Obama bill is more conservative than the one originally passed by the House. (it is also possible that the final bill will include the Stupak Amendment) If the Obama administration does what it should and knocks heads in the House, they could gather the votes to pass reform. In spite of the challenges I mentioned, I believe this is what will happen. Democrats will successfully pass health care legislation. Though they clearly still face serious obstacles to achieving these goals.