Blue Dog Dems last week announced they’ve reached a compromise with Democratic leaders on House health care reform bill H.R. 3200, paving the way for a vote by the full House after the August recess. Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) Energy and Commerce Committee began debating the bill on Wednesday. Significant hurdles remain, though, and the Finance Committee reports it has significant issues still under debate. Blue Dogs want to reduce overall costs of reform, and are very skeptical about the public option idea.

Despite the differences of opinion between liberal Dems and Blue Dogs, the House went into August recess Friday after having narrowly secured the requisite Committee vote (31-28) to send the bill to the House floor for debate and review when they return in September.  The Senate has not made this kind of progress yet. While the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has their proposal in the mark up process, Senate Finance still is not ready to put out their proposal, and the Republicans on Finance want more time to think about how a consensus proposal might yet be achieved. Finance Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and his committee says they will be ready by September. Then HELP and Finance have to forge a consensus on their bills to get one vehicle to the Senate floor. Once both chambers have voted on their bills -- which will require a lot of debate before it happens -- a 'conference committee' will be formed to try to forge a single final bill. Timing will be tough to get this done before Christmas. 

But they WILL get something out this year folks -- the Dems have too much invested in this not to have something passed. Whatever it turns out to be, I guess it will likely take 3 years to fix!

Further Amendments
The House bill is still going to undergo further mark-up in September to discuss proposed amendments that they didn’t have time to hear. One of those is the frustrating Weiner-Braley amendment. But, the House DID actually insert a valuable tort reform provision! Rep. Bart Gordon’s (D-Tenn.) office offered his amendment to provide Medicare incentive payments to states that enact certificate of merit requirements and/or “early offer” programs in medical liability cases. This encouraging development sneaked through in part because it was introduced as a package of amendments (en bloc), which were accepted by both sides without a formal vote. 

*** Image from Flickr (outlier*). ***