Health Care No Stranger To Reconciliation Process - That's the way health reform happens.

Health Care No Stranger To Reconciliation Process
by Julie Rovner

To reconcile or not to reconcile — when it comes to a health overhaul bill, that seems to be the biggest argument of the moment.

At issue is a process called budget reconciliation. By writing Obama's health care plan as a budget bill, Democrats can prevent a Republican filibuster in the Senate and advance the bill with a simple majority instead of the 60-vote supermajority they no longer have.

Not surprisingly, that has Republicans crying foul. Budget reconciliation, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) told reporters Tuesday, "was never designed for a large, comprehensive piece of legislation such as health care, as you all know. It's a budget exercise, and that's why some refer to it as the 'nuclear option.'"

"The use of expedited reconciliation process to push through more dramatic changes to a health care bill of such size, scope and magnitude is unprecedented," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) wrote in a letter to President Obama on Monday, urging him to renounce the possibility of trying to pass a bill using the procedure.

But health care and reconciliation actually have a lengthy history. "In fact, the way in which virtually all of health reform, with very, very limited exceptions, has happened over the past 30 years has been the reconciliation process," says Sara Rosenbaum, who chairs the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University.

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