Waiting on Health Care

Health care is still a highly debated topic, even after the health care summit. It seems some progress was made, but there are still a lot of things that are holding this bill back from being passed. David M. Herszenhorn writes for the New York Times about the issue:

Some House Democrats who voted for the health care bill in November have said that they will oppose any version of the legislation that does not include the tight restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions that they succeeded in inserting into the House measure. Mr. Obama’s plan adopts the Senate provisions on the abortion issue, which are less restrictive.

This means that there are still things to work out with the issue of abortion funding, among other things. I am pro-choice, and therefore believe that the government should fund abortions. While each party is trying to get what they want in the bill, the Democrats are working at a way to speed up the process of passing this bill. Herszenhorn writes:

At this point, Democrats and Republicans have concluded that the only way the health care legislation can be completed is for Democrats to make revisions to the Senate-passed bill and attach those revisions to a budget reconciliation measure.

To be completely honest, reconciliation confuses the heck out of me, and I'm still trying to understand it. But if the bill can get passed faster, I'm all for it. This bill just needs to get passed, one way or another, because as soon as it is, focus can go back to pulling the economy up and getting it back on its feet.