Nancy Pelosi Prepares Fake "Smaller" Health Care Proposal

I say "fake" because I am very certain that this proposal is nothing but something that's supposed to sound all compromisey, while in fact being designed expressly to be unacceptable, to offer liberals the political cover to use reconciliation to pass the bill.

An offer designed to be refused.

"In a matter of days, we will have a proposal," Pelosi said, pointing to Obama's forthcoming bill. "It will be a much smaller proposal than we had in the House bill, because that's where we can gain consensus. But it will be big enough to put us on a path of affordable, quality health care for all Americans that holds insurance companies accountable."

Melody Barnes, a top Obama domestic policy adviser, did not dispute Pelosi's characterization of the new plan as smaller in scope - and quite possibly in cost - than either the House or Senate health care bills.

"It's going to be matter of drawing on these different ideas and coming up with the right proposal," Barnes said in an exclusive interview with Fox. "That's what my colleagues are working on. That's what they're talking with Congress about. We'll see what it looks like when the proposal is sent forward."

Asked how White House staff is putting the new proposal together, Barnes said they are "borrowing" from conversations at Thursday's health care summit.

"We're going to be borrowing from those conversations...to come up with a bill that we hope can receive bipartisan support," Barnes said.

Supposedly malpractice reform and interstate competition for health insurance will be in there.

Based on this --

"But it will be big enough to put us on a path of affordable, quality health care for all Americans that holds insurance companies accountable."

-- I'm guessing it will have some sort of Trojan Horse public option back in it, too.

Is This the Reconciliation Bill? Rocks thinks so--

I'm thinking this is the Reconciliation Bill. Of course it will be smaller and all compromisey and stuff because all it will contain is the changes to the Senate Bill.

It won't be a full fledged replacement.

Possibly, but from what I gather the reconciliation bill will have to make the Senate bill bigger in order to appease House liberals. Not smaller.

Hmmmm... jdub thinks it might be the reconciliation measure, too. He suggests it will barely smaller than the current Senate bill, just to comply with reconciliation's mission of reducing the deficit:

from what i understand, the new bill will have to have a smaller budget than the current version(s)... reconciliation can only be used to effect budget reduction, and those measures necessary to and inseperable from that budget reduction.

so, for example, cutting out the cornhusker kickback.

read hennessey's post about this, it's the best thing out there.

Right, well, fine, cut the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase and you have a nominally "smaller" bill.

But -- another thing they have to do is buy off the unions by exempting them from the "Cadillac Tax." I figure that will cost more than these provisions give back. And even more than that if the Cadillac Tax is eliminated for everyone, not just union members and government employees, as Obama's last proposal specified.

So.... if jdub is right, they'll have to fake up some more "savings" from elsewhere. Probably raid Medicare again.

And More: Rocks replies:

Ace by smaller I meant physically smaller. It won't be some huge bill.

The Senate Bill will be the fact acompli, this is just a little fixer.

"It will be a much smaller proposal than we had in the House bill, because that's where we can gain consensus.

Melody Barnes, a top Obama domestic policy adviser, did not dispute Pelosi's characterization of the new plan as smaller in scope - and quite possibly in cost - than either the House or Senate health care bills.

As far as cost it's only sure it will be smaller than the House bill. It's possible that it will be smaller than the Senate, but don't bet on it.

This bill will add tort reform and cross state selling. It won't have the Public Option but it will have the triggers, etc which if they aren't met will spring the Public opton. She gets the Senate with their Bill, She get the Blue Dogs with the tort reform, etc and the liberals with the trigger.

Hmm. Maybe. I bolded the part about it being "quite possibly" smaller in price because that suggests Rocks is right -- smaller in page count, and barely smaller (if at all) in costs.

posted by Ace at 04:35 PM

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