The new Senator Brown and the Future of Health Care Reform

The good news concerning Senator Brown is, he will most likely be another Senator Joe Lieberman in the Republican Caucus [Check out who was the first Republican to say he would vote for the new Jobs Bill].  He will be as big a pain for the Republicans as Joe is now for the Democrats. They already don’t trust him.  That lack of trust, combined with his independent constituents, will drive Senator Brown to the political center where he will work positively with President Obama on important issues.

If I was an advisor to President Obama, I would tell him to ask Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi to complete the work of the Resolution Committee on the Health Care Reform bill and take it to the Senate for a vote immediately after Senator Brown is sworn in.  {I guess the Health care Conference on 25 Feb was the intermediate step before submitting it for a vote.] Senator Brown will probably feel obliged to vote NO with the rest of the “Party of NO.”  

With this formality out of the way, I would then advise President Obama to break up the entire bill into bite-sized pieces small enough even for a Republican to understand. [This may still happen if passing the bill under Reconciliation does not work] President Obama is already considering breaking out the “health insurance reform” part of the bill and sending it through Congress.  I say, “Don’t stop there!”  Continue sending these bite sized blocks of the bill to Congress every month.  Force the “Party of NO” to keep voting NO every month until November.  

I believe that Senator Brown’s independent voters will not tolerate him continuing to vote NO every month on something they can understand, something they asked for in their message to Washington.  I believe that Senator Brown and a few other moderate senators will feel the trap being set for the “Party of NO” and will start working with President Obama, to save themselves. You may have noticed the “charm” offensive has already begun to enable Senator Brown to have an open perspective on Democratic proposals, say the bite size health care reform bills.

We are not getting everything we need for health care reform in one shot. Maybe we can get most of health care reform in a series of shots, just like in a game of basketball. Not all shots go into the hoop, but you can’t score unless you take the shot or shots in this case.

I will have more thoughts on how we can break up health care into manageable sized blocks.  After the “health insurance reform” block is started into the pipeline by President Obama, I would like to see the “conversion to digital records” block done next.  This block will reduce cost in dollars and in lives in all health care programs, especially in Medicare and Medicaid.  I will have more information about this block and what I think the whole series of health care reform blocks should be about, and what they should contain.

When I get to Congress, I will be working a lot in areas of health care reform.