Trishka asks, "I would like to know how Max Baucus's work on the healthcare would or would not dovetail with Ron Wyden's Healthy Americans Act, and in what way." Hard to say, really. I spoke to Senator Wyden this afternoon, and he sounded characteristically optimistic that his bill still occupied a unique and relevant space in the debate. "The fact is," he said, "as of today, November 13, 2008, in the history of the US Senate, there’s never been [another] actual bill with a significant number of cosponsors shown to be budget neutral and bending the cost curve down. And that argument is more powerful today than six months ago." Asked if this has the possibility to become a competition between him and Baucus, Wyden was emphatic: "I don't feel this is about competition, competition, turf battles, and personality differences have tanked previous efforts on health. People want to get results this time. Not get mired in the smallness of politics. It's a time to be big about reaching out." That said, I'd judge the bills prospects as increasingly dim. Last week, at a press conference, Ron Pollack, director of Families USA, who stood next to Wyden at the introduction of the Healthy Americans Act, said, "We are really troubled by the proposal that [Wyden] has put on the table." Ouch. That's a hard hit from the cautious center, and a signal that Families USA will move in a decisively different direction. Meanwhile, Kennedy is looking at an eventual one bill strategy, Baucus is building his own process (and his bill is fairly close to the Obama bill, and the Health Care for America Now principles), and it's still unclear what exactly Obama wants to do. But it's unlikely that he'll pull onto the Wyden bill. So can the Healthy Americans Act survive? Maybe. It would need a constituency. And for this, there are a couple options. Corporate America could endorse it. The Wyden bill basically liquidates the employer based health care system, so they could decide they want real relief. But there's not been much sign of that. Republicans could leap onto it as their preferred alternative, which would be interesting as they'd actually be arguing for a pretty good bill. At the same time, that would be a fairly dangerous situation, akin to what happened with Jim Cooper's bill in 1994. The cosponsors of the Wyden-Bennett bill -- who now number about 16 -- could band together as a solid bloc in favor of the legislation, forcing the other reform processes to come to some sort of accommodation with them. Wyden could also be absorbed into the eventual consensus process as one of the Senate's recognized health reform leaders, and some of his bill's ideas might enter the final legislation. In some ways, I'd judge that the likeliest outcome here.
