Pelosi: Mass. Election Won’t Stop Health Bill. “We will have health care one way or another.”

[jefferson_dem]

Pelosi: Mass. Election Won’t Stop Health Bill
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

With Democrats increasingly anxious about the special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday and what it will mean for their big health care legislation, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told reporters in California Monday that the legislation would move forward not matter what.

“Let’s remove all doubt,” Ms. Pelosi said. “We will have health care one way or another.”

Ms. Pelosi acknowledged that the path forward could change if the Democrat in the Massachusetts race, Martha Coakley, loses.

“Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts,” Ms. Pelosi said. “Just the question of how we would proceed. But it doesn’t mean we won’t have a health care bill.”

The speaker also slammed the Republican in the Massachusetts race, Scott Brown, and indeed all Congressional Republicans, for trying to block the legislation.

“I heard the candidate in Massachusetts, the Republican candidate, say ‘Let’s go back to the drawing board,’” Ms. Pelosi said.

She continued at length:

The drawing board for the Republican party on health care is to tear it up and throw it away and shred it and never revisit it. This is the opportunity of a generation. If this opportunity is not realized, there won’t be health care for all Americans.

There is no back to the drawing board. The Republicans in Congress have said we will kill health care reform. They weren’t for Social Security. They weren’t for Medicare. And they aren’t for health care for all Americans. They are the handmaidens of the insurance companies and the American people need to understand that. But rather than focus on them we’d rather focus on what is in our bill. We will have legislation that removes all doubt that health care is a right not a privilege, that we will no longer be operating on the playing field of the insurance companies but they will be on the playing field of the American people.

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http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/pelosi-mass-election-wont-stop-health-bill/#more-19173

[MannyGoldstein]

1. But We Have To Have A Wretched Bill To Win 60 Senate Votes, No?

Are we now hearing that we don't need 60 votes in the Senate? Really?

Fascinating.

[jefferson_dem]

2. I read this as her floating the idea that the House approves the Senate health care bill...

For now. Then we fix it later. That's the "nightmare strategy" that was only seen as a last resort ... but we're just about there.

[ChiciB1]

11. And This Is Good... How??? Getting BACK TO IT Is Nothing More Than A JOKE!!

They don't "get back" to fix things, they just pass it along and say "we did it!" I'm thinking this is going to be just another FANTASTIC idea they are going to gloat about, then forget about what "we the people" NEED!

JMHO!

[GreenTea]

3. Dems better wake up & enforce 51% majority rules, wins, just as the republican always have.

[Blasphemer]

10. Exactly

Granted, it's easier for the GOP to get Democratic votes than vice versa but, at the very least, they should be using whatever tactics necessary to assert majority rule. They may not always work but they seem to shy away from it completely. I remember GWB working furiously to hang on to one vote - not because it gave the GOP 60 but because it gave them 50 (+1).

[hulka38]

14. +1

[rateyes]

4. If, then, we are going to go the reconciliation route, it's time to tell Lieberman

et al to fuck off, insert a real public option and a medicare buy in for younger folk, and do the damned thing the right way.

[jenmito]

6. They can't do all that in reconciliation. They can't even have coverage of pre-existing

conditions through reconciliation.

[Pirate Smile]

7. I agree. That is why the House passes the Senate Bill. Lieberman wont be voting on that again.

Then they pass through Reconcilliation the changes to the excise tax provisions and others (subsidies, etc) that they are working on - hopefully the modification to a national exchange or PO instead of state-based exchanges too. Those only need 50 votes and the Insurance regulations would have already been completed by the House passing the current Senate HC Bill.

I think that will be the plan.



edit to add - We don't need Lieberman's vote on the Reconcilliation Bill either.

[jenmito]

9. Yup...

I agree. I heard that possibility on MSNBC today.

[jenmito]

5. K&R. I heard o MSNBC & CNN that they'd probably take the Senate bill and pass it in the Hoiuse.

Sorry to all the killthebillers. We WILL have a bill.

[Joe Chi Minh]

8. The insurance companies will insist on it....?

[stevenleser]

13. Oh brother. Another one for my ignore list. (nt)

[LeftyAndProud60]

12. I love this woman. I hope she keeps this promise. Get em Nancy!!!!!!!!!!!! NT