Marrying Three Bills.

Health reform bills at a glance:

The House Bill. (Pelosi)
Cost: Between $1.2 trillion. (Increases deficit by $65 billion.)
Covers 30 million new people.

Senate HELP Bill. (Kennedy/Dodd)
Cost: $645 billion. (Increases deficit by $597 billion.)
Covers 34 million new people.

Senate Finance Bill. (Baucus)
Cost: $829 billion. (Reduces deficit by $81 billion.)
Covers 25 million new people.

When you look at these numbers, you have to realize (as much of what you can of) the process. At this point, the house bill is already three bills merged into one by the following: (1) The Labor and Pensions Committee, (2) The Ways and Means Committee and (3) The Energy and Commerce Committee. There are currently two senate bills that are in the process of being merged by the following: (1) The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and (2) The Finance Committee. The reason why bills first need to be passed out of committee before the entire house or senate votes on them is because each committee, whether in the house or the senate, has jurisdiction over certain things, so each committee must come up with their own bill with regards to the areas that they reside over. (For example, the Finance Committee is the only committee that can deal with reforming Medicare.) Get what I'm saying?

Merging the bills for the house was very simple to do, because -- unlike the senate -- the house bills built off of each other as they went from committee-to-committee -- making it very painless to merge into one bill. The senate, on the other hand, went in two completely opposite directions with their two committees that reside over health care and whatever the spawn of what those two bills come to be will be extremely interesting to say the least. (Two super quick examples on why merging the senate bills are going to be insane: The HELP Bill has an employer mandate and a public option, while the Finance Committee Bill has an individual mandate and no public option. So, again, merging will be interesting -- to say the absolute least.)

So moving forward, like I said before: we are currently in the stage of watching as the HELP Committee (represented by Sen. Dodd), the Finance Committee (fronted by Sen. Baucus), White House aids (Rahm Emanuel, Kathleen Sebelius, etc.) and Harry Reid (Senate Majority Leader) take these two polar opposite bills and try to marry them. After that, the senate will have a bill and the house will have a bill. The house will vote on theirs and the senate will vote on theirs. If each bill passes in their respective chamber, then the bills move to conference (which is just a fancy term for [again] merging another two bills) -- where the house and the senate will merge their respective bills to come up with the final product -- the actual health care reform legislation. Once that process is completed, the house and senate will vote on this final bill and if it garners a majority of support in both the house and the senate, it will then [finally] move to President Obama's desk where he will sign it into law. And then, BAM! Health reform. Not so crazy, right? I'd say, at this point, we're still on step one of about five. Still, where we're at now is further than we've gotten on the reforming health care front since LBJ passed Medicare in 1965. Nobody since then has ever gotten health reform legislation out of all five committees.

So fuck, man. Now that-that's finally out of the god damn way, we can move on in later editions as to why we should all slap Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senator Max Baucus (D-MO) in the face while making out with people like Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY).