I think if anything came out of yesterday's meeting between Republicans and Democrats concerning the future of health-care in the United States, it's that the Democrats will be on their own.

Republicans urged Democrats to scrap the bill and start over, again and again, despite the several areas that they found general support for on both sides.  Both sides agreed that costs need to be curved, and that the deficit must be lowered, but there wasn't an agreement on expanded coverage for citizens.  Republicans prefer John Boehner's plan which would cover an additional 3 million people for the short term, while the Republican shadow budget phases out Medicare and Medicaid for those 55 and under.

The Democratic plan is not perfect either, especially the individual mandate which no one likes because who really likes to be forced into buying something?  The reasoning behind the mandate is to head off problems created by the elimination of pre-existing conditions as a way for insurance companies to deny service.  The fear is that people will only buy insurance when they actually get sick, essentially ruining the market and bankrupting insurance, so the mandate was presented as a way to spread the risk around to a greater number of people, lowering costs for the whole.  You may not agree with it, but that's the reasoning behind it.

The CBO scored the Democratic plan as lowering the deficit and curbing the longterm costs of health-care in the country all while covering an additional 30 million people.  The problem being, how to pass it.

This is where it gets a little complicated.  The House and the Senate have already passed their own versions of a health-care bill, but they now need to pass the exact same bill for it be be sent to the President to be signed.  Before they can do this, the plan is first for the Senate to pass a 'fix' for their version of the bill, to remove all of the crap that everyone hates, like the Corn Husker Kickback and the sweetheart deal for Louisiana, which were what really made people mad about the whole process.  Since the Democrats don't have 60 seats in the Senate anymore, they have to rely on something called reconciliation, which is a procedural motion that allows the passage of legislation with a simple majority.  However, for this to work, the House must pass the identical bill that the Senate will end up with after the 'fix' passes the Senate. 

There has been a lot of speculation as to whether or not the House would be willing to do that, but it looks like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to be able to pass the new version of the health bill, and will do so before the Senate passes its 'fix'.  Republicans spent a lot of time yesterday in the meeting warning how awful it would be to use reconciliation, but its been used 21 times since 1981, the majority of the time by Republicans.  They passed Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and the Medicare expansion (neither of which were paid for) through reconciliation and the good news for Democrats is that the 'fix' is a small piece of legislation, ideal for reconciliation, as larger more complicated legislation would have a much more difficult time passing.

The bottom line is that the Dems will move forward on this, if for no other reason than health costs will bankrupt the government in a few years, but perhaps of more immediate importance, is to be able to show the American people they actually did something over the last year and a half, hopefully to minimize their losses in November.