Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) said today that “similarities between his committee’s bill and the one being marked up in the Senate Finance Committee would make it easier to meld the two proposals into a single bill,” The Hill reports.
"I don’t think that there is an insurmountable hurdle in melding these two bills and putting them together," Harkin said during an appearance on MSNBC.
Harkin said there was "no doubt" that the inclusion of an individual mandate in the Finance bill improved the easiness to merge it with the HELP bill.
But the two committees must work out differences surrounding a public health option proposal.
The key sticking point between the two bills will most likely be whether or not the final Senate package will include the public (or "government-run") healthcare option. While the HELP bill includes it, the Finance bill — in its current form — eschews the public option altogether in favor of nonprofit healthcare cooperatives.
No comments:
Post a Comment