Fix Health Care Policy

The Hill reports today that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has agreed to a 72-hour waiting period between posting a health care bill online and a final vote on the bill, conceding to Republican demands for three-day period to read a final bill.

House GOP members had introduced a petition requiring the wait time for lawmakers to read all bills, which some centrist Democrats had signed, the Hill reports. The article quotes a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) who doubted the promise. “House Democrats actually voted to post the trillion-dollar ‘simulus’ bill online for 48 hours before a vote and then broke that promise, so this should be taken with a large grain of salt,” said Michael Steel.

The Senate Finance Committee, which is in the midst of marking up Sen. Max Baucus’ “Chairman’s Mark” of his health care bill, defeated a similar amendment yesterday. 

To ensure that the Senate would actually know what they were voting on, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) offered an amendment that would have required that actual legislative text, as well as a final Congressional Budget Office estimate of the cost of the bill, be posted for 72 hours on the Senate Finance Committee Web site for public review before the Senate Finance Committee could vote on its final passage.

The Bunning amendment was defeated on a largely party-line vote, with all Senate Democrats – except Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) – voting against it.

Tags: 72-hour wait period, Chairman's Mark, read the bill, Senate Finance Committee