This was a big day in the final push towards passage of health care legislation. The House released the final text of the reconciliation bill and the Congressional Budget Office released a very good score for the bill. According to the CBO, the bill will reduce the federal budget deficit by $138 billion over the next decade. No legislation has had this much potential to reduce the deficit since the Clinton years.
The bill itself contains no surprises. It does have a provision to boost Medicaid payments to physicians, which should help address the access issues I discussed the other day. The public option is probably dead (unless the Senate tries to revive it, which seems unlikely), but I remain hopeful that a future Congress can enact it once people realize that the government can do some things pretty well.
The final House vote is scheduled for Sunday. Anything can still happen, but this feels like history in the making.
It will reduce the federal budget? I’ll believe it when I see it. I don’t know that the government can do a health care well but they definitely HAVE to do it. The Democrats are kind of damned if they do and damned if they don’t though. They are definitely going to get blamed for passing a shitty bill, but if they don’t pass anything they will get blamed for doing nothing. So I’m for passing it now. Let’s get something through and then fix it later….