Posted on 09/13/2003 7:32:46 AM PDT by truthandlife
During the August recess, congressional Republicans heard plenty from constituents about the prescription-drug bill — all of it bad. Liberals and the AARP have ginned up opposition to the bill as too stingy. Conservatives say it costs too much. And everyone worries that the bill will give many seniors worse coverage than they already have.
The administration has long recognized this last point, but argued that under current trends people were going to lose their drug coverage anyway. But this response never made much political sense. Put yourself in the place of a congressman. Your constituents are going to lose their drug coverage no matter what you do. Would you rather they blame their health plan, or you? Congressmen may not know much about health care, but that question they can answer.
So the probability that the bill will fall apart is going up.
The House Republican leadership has been sticking to a strategy favored by conservatives. When the conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill comes back, they want the Senate to move on it first. They want the Senate to pass a bill with 51 votes — i.e., a bill that doesn't make a single unnecessary compromise with liberals. If the Senate can't do that, the House leaders don't want to take up the issue. Some Republican leaders, notably RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, have been claiming that the Senate Republicans can indeed pass a bill over Ted Kennedy's objections. But it's not clear, at least to me, what the coalition of 51 would look like. Will Chafee and Snowe get behind a bill that Kennedy isn't?
If the bill collapses, that doesn't mean that Congress will do nothing about prescription drugs. There is always the option of passing a stripped-down bill that covers only seniors with particularly acute needs. Such a bill would be closer to $40 billion than $400 billion. Perhaps a few small reforms to Medicare would be thrown in. For anything larger, Republicans would come back in two years — with, they hope, a larger Senate majority.
Here's hoping it dies.
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