As published for Critical Condition on healthcare.nationalreview.com on March 2nd, 2010:

After two and a half months of relatively light Congressional activity on the health-care front, Democrats are apparently gearing up for a hyperactive March.  According to Inside Health Policy (subscription required), the period between now and Easter will be filled with a series of complicated steps that will all need to work perfectly in order for the Democrats to pass their health plan before Congress leaves for its spring break. First, the president will be issuing his revised new proposal, which will be converted into legislative language and then scored by CBO. By March 19, the House would then pass the health bill that the Senate passed back in December — and that the House has repeatedly said they did not like and would not pass — with the assurance that the Senate would go forward and fix it in accordance with some type of bicameral compromise. The House would then have to act again, by March 21, and pass a reconciliation bill amending the Senate bill that the House would have just passed.

At this point, and only after the House had acted twice, the Senate would take up the reconciliation bill changing the original Senate bill to reflect the president’s new proposal. This bill would be considered under the reconciliation process, with 30 hours of debate and passage via a simple majority rather than the 60 votes the Senate typically requires. Effectively, this process will use the passage of the Senate bill to enable the reconciliation vehicle to proceed and become the new health-care law.

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