March 1st, 2010 – After Thursday’s televised Health Care Summit that brought together leaders from Democrats and Republicans, it appears that the Democrats are ignoring the Republicans request to draft a better Health Reform Bill and will press forward with a their rather unpopular Health Reform Bill.
59% of voters polled say President Obama should start over with a new bill at a later time if Thursday’s health care summit failed to bring a bipartisan compromise. On the other hand, 34 percent think President Obama should push forward and try to pass the current Health Reform bill without any Republican support. Source
On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Democrats would still consider Republican ideas, but that jettisoning Mr. Obama’s health plan as Republicans advocated wasn’t “fertile territory.” Republicans are very concerned that they will be excluded from the process and Democrats could use their Congressional majority and a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation to ramrod their legislation through the Senate. However, now it appears that the Democrats do not have the votes to get new legislation through Congress.
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R., Va.) estimated that House Democrats had secured 205 votes so far, leaving them short of the 217 needed to pass the legislation. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the president would make an announcement next week about the “way forward” following the bipartisan meeting. Source
If the Democrats do push forward and somehow find the votes in the House, Colorado Health Insurance Brokers’ clients can expect to not see any meaningful changes until 2013-2014.
Colorado, what do you think? Should the Democrats see if they can get the Senate bill approved in the House or start from scratch with a bi-partisan effort? Click on the “Comments” link below to share your opinion.
I’m in the same boat, sort of. I quit my job last Friday (FINALLY), and my new job will start March 8th. With my new job, I’ll have to go through a 3 month waitnig period before I’m even eligible for health insurance, and even then, half of the cost of the premium will be deducted from my paycheck. That’s about $225/month. Which means, for a few months at least, I will either have to do COBRA, which will cost me around $450 (even though it’s an HMO), or do NOTHING, which will cost me about $80/month in state-assessed penalties for not having health insurance (thanks, Mass), and risk that something might happen. I also have PCOS and see a therapist for depression, which means I would be screwed applying for insurance on my own. I’m not sure what to do.