Health Care Reform Bill will become law, like it or not.

It is clear to me that the Republic Party is getting the amendments they added to the Senate's version of health care reform. 70% of what they want is in the bill.

So there is NO misunderstanding, the Senate Bill has already been passed with 60 votes for, a super-majority. The House passed their bill with a simple majority. Much has been made about reconciliation, a process where Senate bills are passed with a simple majority, as is stated in the Constitution. Having said all that, the process now is simple. The House now passes the Senate Bill as it stands. It goes to the President for his signature and becomes law.

The deal being struck between the House and the Senate is simple also. The House passes the Senate Bill by majority vote and then the House presents a bill to make adjustments to the Senate bill which has become law, to remove the parts of the bill which the House finds objectionable. The bill then goes to the Senate and under reconciliation, a majority vote, the changes are implemented. That bill then goes to the President for his signature into law.

Okay, do we all understand now?

The President gave the Republic representative's ample opportunity to accept the reality of the situation and offered them the chance to be part of the process. The answer was, start over and take baby steps. The Republic Party has had ample opportunity over the years to do just that, take the baby steps and chose not to. Oh, I am sorry..I am wrong. The Republic Party did pass legislation to create the unfunded Medicare Part D, the Prescription Drug plan. I have Part D and I cannot for the life of me figure it out. One of the parts of that law protected the drug companies from any negotiations to save the government money, in other words, the government pays whatever the drug companies want to charge for they drugs and also banned the re-importation of drugs from Canada, the same ones we have here but at a lower cost. It is an interesting note to point out that the VA is mandated to negotiate with the drug companies for the best price, but not Medicare. This new health care plan closes the donut-hole in part D and requires negotiating for the best price. Did I mention that the Part D law was passed by the Republic Party by a majority vote, by way of reconciliation? The same reconciliation procedure that the Republic party is complaining about now against the Democrats?

As the President said, this bill will become law and let the voters decide in November who was right.