The House-ing Market

Remember when President Abraham Lincoln said, "A house divided is a house that cannot stand."?  Or when Luther Vandross told us all, "A house is not a home."?    Great lines by similarly great Americans, and they're unbelievably true.  We've been talking a lot about the Senate over the past months, specifically the Finance Committee, since they took nearly twice as much time as all the House committees to pass a bill.  Now we are at a critical juncture in the health care debate, and soon we will have two bills: one from the House and one from the Senate. 

Previously, I talked about the likelihood of the merged Senate bill containing a version of the public option, and that seems to be more likely than ever before.  Apparently, Senator Reid is leaning toward putting an opt-out version of the public option in the final bill.  Reid essentially holds the fate of the public option in his hands, since his decision will determine which side gets the strategic advantage. If a public plan is included in the Senate bill at the outset, opponents would have to find 60 votes to remove it from the bill, which is seemingly impossible.  

While Reid may hold a great deal of power over the inclusion of a public option in the final bill, Speaker Pelosi, who has held a lower profile recently, may hold the keys to creating the strongest public option possible as well as providing the most generous benefits and subsidies to average Americans.  Pelosi's bill not only has the stronger public option, but will do more to provide a permanent fix for our health care system.  According to Ezra Klein, the main differences between the House and Senate Finance Bill are clear.

The Senate Finance Bill gets to 94 percent coverage. The House bill will hit 96 percent. The Senate Finance bill spends a bit over $450 billion on subsidies to help people afford insurance. The House bill will spend more than $700 billion. The Senate Finance bill doesn't have an employer mandate. The House bill does. The Senate Finance bill funds itself by taxing family health-care benefits over $21,000. The House bill funds itself by taxing incomes over $500,000. The Senate Finance bill expands Medicaid. The House bill expands Medicaid by more. The Senate Finance bill costs $829 billion. The House bill costs $871 billion. 

While the House bill may cost $42 billion more than the Senate bill, it covers more people through strong subsidies that allow for universal coverage.  Because of these subsidies, along with an employer mandate and the expansion of Medicaid, the slightly higher cost of the bill is far outweighed by both the long term and immediate impact of the bill.  Essentially, The House bill will bring us closer to universal coverage at a cheaper price for individual citizens. The combination of a strong public option as well as a individual and employer mandate allows the government and individuals to pay less for better coverage.

Although this is clearly the stronger bill, and would do more to reform our broken system, there's no chance in hell that it ever passes the Senate.  So why then have I spent my precious time advocating for a bill that will never see the light of day?  Because Nancy Pelosi is a political genius, that why.  We've all assumed, myself included, that Pelosi is doing all this to bring the strongest public option possible to the table.  Well, again we happen to be wrong. Ezra Klein breaks down Pelosi's game plan beautifully,

The part of Pelosi's approach that people haven't really picked up on is that she's paired the stronger public option with more generous subsidies and benefit packages, rather than leaving it on its own to dramatize the potential savings. There's a reason for that: If the Senate wants to weaken the public option, this gives her leverage to demand that they put money on the table to maintain the benefit levels that the strong public option made possible. In other words, the strong public option also gives her leverage to bargain for more affordability and better subsidies.

Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are more farsighted than you and I apparently.  Instead of being concerned with a policy proposal that could never gain the necessary amount of votes, the President and Speaker of the House have committed themselves to creating a bill that makes health insurance affordable to all Americans, regardless of the strength of the public option. Reid's opt-out public option may be able to do the job alongside Pelosi's strong benefit structure.  

Maybe our House of Cards wont collapse after all.