Recordpub.com - OUR VIEW: It's time for a decision on health care reform

The issue, as President Barack Obama sees it, is simple: Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform.

He's right. The debate has dragged on for more than a year and our country has other pressing problems, the most important of which is Congress doing whatever it can to get the economy moving again so people have jobs.

But if only it were that simple.

The House and the Senate, both controlled by Democrats, have passed health care legislation, but with substantive differences. And now Obama has weighed in with a bill of his own.

Even its most ardent Republican opponents concede a final bill would pass if it were a matter of a simple majority. But in the Senate, it's not. The Democrats have only 59 of the 60 votes they need to shut off debate, a necessary preliminary to the final passage.

There is a way around that obstacle but it's controversial and getting there is complicated. Under a process called reconciliation, the Senate can pass bills with significant budgetary impact by a simple majority of 51 votes. The Democrats have the votes to do that.

The Republicans, who freely resorted to the practice when they were in charge during the Bush years, say this would be an outrageous abuse of the legislative process. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell says, "Once reconciliation is explained to them -- it will be the issue in every single race in America this fall."

The Democrats are betting, probably correctly, that once health care passes the public will quickly lose interest in how it passed and turn to the more pressing issue of how the overhaul will affect them.

A tentative plan taking shape would have the House pass the Senate's health care bill, ensuring that, come what may, there will be a law. The House then would enact what's being called a "clean up bill," incorporating the House Democrats' major objections to the Senate version and portions of Obama's bill, including concessions he made this week to the Republicans.

Those concessions entail stepped up efforts to root out fraud in Medicare and Medicaid; money for state demonstration projects on malpractice reform, which will be needed to keep the system affordable; increased reimbursements to doctors serving Medicaid patients; and health savings accounts as part of any insurance exchange. Observers say these additions, which we favor, are unlikely to win a single Republican vote but serve mainly to reassure wavering conservative Democrats.

The clean up bill would then be sent to the Senate for a simple majority vote under the reconciliation formula. It sounds simple enough but here, too, there's a problem: Baldly put, the House Democrats don't trust the Senate Democrats. They are looking for ironclad assurances that the senators will keep their part of the bargain.

Thus, the debate drags on. Either pass reform or drop it. It's time to move on.