Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is a common sight on the Sunday morning political talk shows, and after listening in on a bloggers' conference call with the senator this morning, it's easy to ascertain why. He's smart, articulate, and he can think on his feet. Hatch sits on the Senate Finance committee and was one of ten senators who voted against Max Baucus' health care reform bill, and he is the ranking Republican on Finance's health care subcommittee.As for BaucusCare, Hatch doesn't care much for it, but he's quick to explain that he isn't aware of a Republican who doesn't support some form of health care reform. "They could have had seventy or eighty votes in the United States Senate," Hatch told us, "had they really worked with us to come up with a good health care bill."
Although it's early in the game, right now the Dems sorta-have just one GOP senator in their health care camp--Olympia Snowe of Maine. Hatch doubts that there will be more than two GOP defections on whatever health care bill emerges from the Democrats.
Reconciliation was discussed a lot during the call. Within the context of the arcane rules of the Senate, reconciliation is a parliamentary maneuver used to move narrowly focused legislative or budgetary items through the upper chamber by a simple majority, not the usual 60 votes. Like it or not, this is how the Senate is run, but reconciliation was not created to ram through such a wide-ranging bill, one that effects at least one-sixth of the economy.
Hatch told us the scary part: "The Democrats have no idea what impact of the Baucus bill will be on health care costs in the long term. No idea!" (His voice went up a couple of octaves.) He said the same thing about BaucusCare and how it would effect insurance premiums.
Will the final Democratic health care reform bill cover abortion services? Polls consistently show that a majority of pro-choice Americans oppose using federal funds to pay for abortions. Hatch proposed two amendments to the Baucus bill, one that would have codified current legislation that prohibits the use federal funds to pay for abortions, the other would have prevented the feds from forcing doctors and hospitals who don't want to perform abortions for religious or other reasons of conscience.
The Dems' retort is that such amendments are unnecessary; the Hyde Amendment covers it. If Hatch's amendments are redundant, then in my opinion, what is the big deal? On the other side of the aisle in the House of Representatives, Bart Stupak (D-MI) faces a similar brick wall from the dominant wing of his party--left-wing Democrats.
BaucusCare, without a public option, has been moved out of committee. But some far-left Dems in both chambers want a public option in the the health care reform bill. So what gives? "There's going to be a public option in the final bill," Hatch predicts. "It's not going to be called that," he added, "but it will be a public option under some other name."
It's going to be a wild fall and winter in Washington. I will keep an eye on Hatch's view of the evolving bill.
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