If you read any political news coverage today in some of the leading Washington journals, you can't help but realize that health care reform as presented in the current House and Senate bills appears to be dying, if not dead.
The argument instead for an incremental approach on health care, mentioned by President Obama in his interview with George Stephanopoulous on Wednesday night, seems to be gaining traction with House Democrats, the most liberal group of legislators on the issue.
Don't think so? Listen to Arizona Representative Raul Grijalva, co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus. The D.C. paper The Hill reports:
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus — which spent months fighting the chamber’s centrists over a government-run “public option” — said that momentum was shifting toward a step-by-step strategy.
And Grijalva said he could support such a strategy “if we have tough insurance reform, if we deal with the donut hole, if we deal with prescription drugs, and if we deal at some point with an expansion of Medicare and Medicaid.”
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.