The Democrats have not needed the Republicans to pass health care. The Democratic majorities are large enough.
Actually, not in the Senate. Even though the Dems had a 60 vote majority, with the Reps using filibuster against every bill but most particularly against healthcare, you always needed 60 votes to get anything done. But you can always expect one or two Senators to not go along with the program. Thus, given the Rep stance, and the need for 60 votes, the Dems simply didn't have enough.
Had the Reps not insisted on party loyalty on this one, Snowe would have gone along. And perhaps one or two others.
Even though they don't need any Republican votes (pre-Mass), I suspect that two changes, tort reform and allowing insurance to be sold across state lines, would be enough to peel off perhaps 5% of the Republican votes. Perhaps i should know this but I don't know the arguments against those two changes (other than trail lawyers don't like it).
Both are already in the bill. I gather from today's discussions, that tort reform might have some room to be beefed up. The business of selling insurance across state lines is definitely in the bill with the exchanges. And enough regulation muscle to protect consumers and stop cherry picking which creates separate packages for high risk and low risk customers. And thus much, much higher costs for the former.
As things stand now, the filibuster is not the problem for this bill. The problem may be that Pelosi may no longer have the votes she needs in the House.
My guess is this will depend on the arrangement with the Senate Dems. If the House Dems feel they have a lock of an agreement to clean up the bill in a fashion they will accept and that, most particularly, they have iron clad agreements that it will be cleaned up in reconciliation, then Pelosi can go to members who are on the fence for reelection reason and put some arm on them. Without that, they will say something to her like, look if I vote for it and the Senate doesn't clean it up or doesn't pass anything, then it's a wasted vote. And I've put my seat in danger over that vote. |
