The House Health Bill: The House Ways and Means Amendments

Robert Moffit / October 28, 2009

Editor’s note: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) recently indicated she plans to use the House Ways and Means Committee version of health care reform as the base of the bill moving forward in the House. We’re reposting an analysis of what that bill looked like on the way out of committee and which amendments didn’t make it through.

Just before the August recess, the House health bill (HR 3200) cleared all three panels. The next step is House floor consideration, presumably in September.

The House Education and Labor Committee made a series of crucial health policy decisions, and on July 17, the House Ways and Means Committee completed its disposition of the bill. It took a little over 16 hours for the Committee to go through a 1,018-page bill, even though it will significantly change a portion of the economy that makes up almost 17 percent of GDP.

Ways and Means Committee members engaged in debate over several crucial provisions of the legislation, including those addressed by the two other major House committees responsible for the bill. No attempts to improve HR 3200 succeeded in the House Ways and Means mark-up. Not a single amendment, offered by a Republican or Democrat, passed the Committee.

The key items that the Committee addressed are as follows: (more…)