The Great Big Myth That Reconciliation Would Not Work For Health Care Reform

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/16/the-great-big-myth-that-reconciliation-would-not-work-for-health-care-reform/

One the the greatest myths you will hear from senators is that reconciliation will not work for health care reform. This myth is pure nonsense, just like the myth that they need 60 votes (something that could be changed any time by 50 senators and the vice president, but that is another story).

The argument against using reconciliation to pass health care reform is that provisions not related to the budget could be removed by the Byrd rule. There are two big problems with this argument.

First, the argument ignores that reconciliation would still protect the guts of reform. For example, half of the people who will gain insurance (roughly 15 million) will get insurance because of the expansion of Medicaid. Expanding Medicaid is completely doable with reconciliation.

Expanding Medicaid, Medicare buy-in, the public option, closing the Medicare doughnut hole, taxes, affordability tax credits, cost control reforms for Medicare and Medicaid, and more can all be done with reconciliation. These are all the most difficult parts of reform.

Secondly, the argument that reconciliation could strip out the important insurance regulations is very weak. Technically, provisions not related to the budget can be removed by the Byrd rule, and that includes the important new insurance regulations (ban on pre-existing conditions, community rating, lifetime limits, etc.), but there is a very important caveat: these provisions will only be removed if they fail to get 60 votes to wave the Byrd rule for those provisions.

I dare all 40 Republicans plus one conservative Democrat to vote for a stand-alone provisions that would let insurance companies continue to exclude people for having pre-existing conditions. If they are foolish enough to vote against extremely popular insurance regulation as stand-alone provisions they will face the mother of all attacked ads in 2010.

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