• Listen to this segment

Congressional committees are abuzz this week, tackling health care reform and all its myriad aspects. Earlier in the week, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed its version of a bill that Democrats said would offer more universal, affordable and effective health coverage. The majority of Senators on that committee struck down an amendment allowing individual states to pass and implement publicly funded, privately delivered single payer healthcare programs, if they want. Three House committees are set to begin work on the issue this week, scrambling to make headway before the August recess. The House Ways and Means Committee will look at how to pay for expanded health coverage, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will take on insurance companies, and the House Education and Labor Committee will examine employee benefits. The Senate Health and the Senate Finance Committees will take up the issue within the next several weeks. President Obama hopes to sign a reform bill into law by October. The President has also been very active on the issue, appointing a new Surgeon General, addressing public forums and reiterating the dire need for reform. His conservative opponents meanwhile have been busy fighting back with advertisements warning of the nightmarish scenarios in Canadian style government healthcare, and balking at Democrats’ ideas to increase taxes on the rich to pay for healthcare. There have been scattered demonstrations demanding single payer health care as well as some form of a public option in Washington DC and cities around the country.

GUEST: Ellen Shaffer, co-director of the Center for Policy Analysis, focusing on health policy

Read Ellen’s blog at http://ellenshaffer.blogspot.com/.