Word: carefulness
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...choreography on health care has been difficult in no small part because of the long-standing animosity between the two chambers of Congress. An old joke among House Democrats has it that the Republicans are merely adversaries; the Senate is the enemy. That tension has grown in the past year as House Democrats have cast a series of politically treacherous votes on such issues as health care and climate change, only to be left exposed as the measures have been shredded or buried altogether in the procedural thicket of the Senate. So it's no surprise that the inclination...
House Democrats are unlikely to agree to pass the Senate bill without some kind of ironclad guarantee that the Senate will actually follow through on its promise to make changes to its original measure. Among those: scaling back the so-called Cadillac tax on very expensive health care policies and stripping the bill of sweetheart deals for individual Senators, such as the now infamous "Cornhusker kickback" that Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson arranged to exempt his state from having to pay additional costs for expanding Medicaid. One possibility under discussion would have at least 51 Senators signing a letter promising...
...less expensive. It also does not include a government-run public option for providing coverage to the uninsured - a provision of the original House measure that had been anathema to those who saw it as the leading edge of what they feared would be a government takeover of health care...
Voting for health care may well end the careers of some House Democrats; their opponents already have attack ads ready. But having come this far, Obama believes, there is something that would be even worse for the Democrats. And that would be to fail to finish...
...more about health care...