ThinkProgress and RollCall report on Senator Dodds recent discussion about the timing of a health reform bill. David Drucker of RollCall writes:
Senate Democratic leaders’ hopes of approving health care reformbefore adjourning for the August recess appear all but dead, with theprospect of meeting President Barack Obama’s demand for a bill on hisdesk by Oct. 15 looking increasingly difficult.
Logisticalhurdles in the Senate, while significant, are only part of the problem.A major political battle looms over the key components of health carereform — particularly over the role of the federal government — thatcould stall Democrats even after they gained a filibuster-proofmajority with the addition of Sen.-elect Al Franken (D-Minn.).
Sen.Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), managing the health care bill in the Health,Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, signaled late last week thatDemocratic leaders do not expect a bill to clear the Senate in the nextfive weeks. Rather, Dodd indicated, the goal is to complete the trickymerger of the HELP and Finance Committee bills, with the floor fracasover a final bill put off until after Labor Day….
Finance Chairman MaxBaucus (D-Mont.) is attempting to draft a bill that costs less than $1trillion, is deficit neutral and can garner significant bipartisansupport. The HELP bill has been drafted to satisfy liberal reformgoals, including a robust government-run insurance option Republicanswill never accept.
HELP announced last week that its legislationwould cost approximately $611 billion over 10 years. But that is not adeficit-neutral figure, and the score did not include the cost ofexpanding Medicare, projected by some to be worth another $400 billionin additional spending.
Meanwhile, political difficulties abound in Obama’s push to overhaul the nation’s $2.3 trillion health care system this year. …