Health care reform did a serious brake-check!
After the buzz from the Massachusettes election upset died down, many are now asking,
Where does Health Care Reform stand? or even,
Is 'ObamaCare' dead?
Here are a few perspectives on where health care reform stands this week:
Grace-Marie Turner finds reform to be at a stalemate and President Obama is not helping to direct it to any end. Following his State of the Union address last Wednesday, Turner writes "Congress is at war with itself...Mr. Obama needed to do a lot more than restate the problems...", not to mention take the opportunity to bring both parties back to negotiations versus playing "partisan blame games".
When it comes to the American public, Turner cites a recent CNN poll showing that "69% of Americans want Congress to either draft a new bill or drop the issue altogether." Furthermore, she feels that if congress took a step back and attempted to pass smaller bits of the bill versus the whole enchilada, the public might
more easily digest the idea of reform.
Ironically Wolters Kluwer Health Reform Talk blog posted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is, in fact,
looking into the options to pass smaller pieces of legislation.
Still congress is attempting to "
reconcile" by tossing revisions back and forth between the House and Senate-- whatever it takes to get 60 votes. This juvenile process shows no end in sight, as just 24 hours after the President's address the House sent revisions to the Senate totaling $300 billion, making an already costly reform even more expensive.
Just yesterday Obama delivered his $3.8 trillion projected budget for 2011, which just so happens to factor in health care reform. His ambitious assumption shows health reform is
still very much alive, but the question is, will momentum pick up again?