The Role of Congress

The legislature will have an important role to fill first. It must pass our bill in the first place.

We're going to be dealing with a large, complex system that has proven difficult in the past to push and continues to be difficult now. Notably, two previous bills fell pray to our legislative process, H.R. 1300 and the Clinton Health Bill. They were shuffled through committee after committee until they had no traction and died in the House.

There is a two-fold solution to this. The first is to roll out universal health care in phases. Instead of attempting to pass a complex bill through heavy partisanship, we would pass specific bills that improve our system incrementally. The scope of each bill is intended to remain universal at each step, but what is covered and done is expanded or adjusted with each subsequent bill. Furthermore, glitches can be fixed more easily, a posited by this article.

The second solution is to employ omnibus bills. They are a way to circumvent the very processes that doomed prior bills. The goal, in this case, would be to attach the bills to budget bills or other bills the opposition would desire to have passed.

It must be stressed that these solutions are meant to deal with the structure of Congress and the stiff opposition of our opponents. It would always be ideal to pass universal healthcare with bipartisan support. Demonstrating how effective the system could be with each new phase would make it easier to sell the idea to the other side. The omnibus strategy is best a last resort,