Despite all the Sturm und Drang emanating from town hall meetings, there’s still a very good chance some kind of health care reform bill will pass this year. And one of the biggest forces working toward that goal is America’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, which are expected to pour as much as $150 million into advertisements supporting the reform effort.

If that last sentence makes you flash back to Bill Murray’s line in Ghostbusters about the end times, mass hysteria, and dogs and cats living together, you’re not alone. On Tuesday, John Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, issued an open letter in which he implored drug companies “to halt this short-sighted, misguided campaign and listen to the American people, rather than continue to collaborate on an effort to spin them.”

The president’s plan to overhaul America’s health system hits turbulence in Congress

AP
“IT’S a lot easier to be Santa than Scrooge,” harrumphs Jim Cooper. The congressman from Tennessee is complaining about the health-reform plan unveiled in July by the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives. He thinks it is a populist initiative that will end up fuelling rather than curbing America’s runaway health inflation. Such tough talk would not be in the least surprising coming from the opposition party; but Mr Cooper is a Democrat. And he insists that reform efforts have gone so badly wrong that it is time to “go back to the drawing board”.

Health reform is the domestic priority for Barack Obama, who has been pushing both houses of Congress to come up with final health bills before the August recess. On current plans, the House of Representatives is supposed to wind up its session on July 31st, while the Senate is scheduled to stay at work one more week.

A few weeks ago, it had seemed that his efforts were working, as both chambers were making progress on health legislation. But after months of building up momentum, Obamacare has hit serious snags, and Mr Obama’s deadline looks likely to be missed. Whether this merely delays reforms until the autumn or scuppers them altogether remains to be seen.

The health bill supported by the House leadership quickly won approval from two of the three relevant committees, but then got bogged down in the Energy and Commerce committee. That is because Mr Cooper and half a dozen like-minded fiscal conservatives (all part of the “Blue Dog” coalition of Democrats) threatened to keep it from advancing to a vote by the entire chamber. On July 29th the Blue Dogs agreed to stop blocking the committee’s work if the party leadership agreed to various changes in the draft bill, including a cut in spending of some $100 billion, and to a delay in the final House vote until after the recess.