Reform talk over the past few days

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee commenced mark-up for the tenth day yesterday. Most amendments were Republican-sponsored and didn’t gather enough votes to pass. However, there was one small victory in an amendment put forward by Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), co-sponsored by Tom Harkin and Chris Dodd (who unfortunately was absent from mark-up yesterday because he was attending his sister’s funeral. Our thoughts are with the Dodd family). The amendment established funding for community women’s health centers. There was some discussion – John McCain (R-AZ) was upset about the lack of Congressional Budget Office scoring on the amendment, and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Bob Casey (D-PA) were both concerned about the broadness of the bill and the possible inclusion of abortion coverage. Hatch inquired about whether Mikluski would be willing to change her amendment to explicitly exclude abortion, and she said, politely, she was not willing to do that.

Phew.

In other reform news, taxing benefits looks like it won’t happen, and tax increases for the wealthy look like they might happen. The issue, of course, is still financing this bill. The group of Blue Dog conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives have voiced concerns over financing, so the House Tri-Committee bill will not be released today, but hopefully on Monday of next week. And out of all of this rubbish is the reality that the timetable for health care is slipping (some say due to explicitly obstructionist Republican members of these committees).