Will the House play ping-pong with Senate health reform bill?

Word from Capitol Hill sources via Sam Stein at HuffPo is that the House will not try to reconcile its bill with the Senate bill, which leaves little to no hope that the public option will be in the final bill. Instead, the House will add amendments to the Senate bill.

Much of this is procedural, but in the end, the problem is political. House members like John Tanner, Bart Gordon, and Jim Cooper have already used up considerable political capital by voting on the House version of the bill - a version that included the controversial Stupak Amendment on abortion and the controversial public option. Gordon, in particular, took tremendous heat for his vote in the Energy and Commerce Committee (passing the bill out of committee to the floor) and for his vote against the final version of the House bill.

After spending time, energy, and political muscle, the House is now in the awkward position of having to vote for the Senate's version of the bill. This is a little like building an SUV - you can use a truck chassis or a car chassis. But now that the Senate and House versions are using different ways to achieve similar goals (the Senate uses the tax on high-premium insurance plans, while the House uses a surcharge on the wealthiest 1% ... the Senate uses individual mandates and penalties, while the House uses the public option to lower costs and increase competition), it's time to choose one version or the other. And the Senate's greater power to say no (through filibusters and procedures that require 60-vote majorities) puts the House in a much less powerful position.

The real losers in this whole situation are the people of Tennessee, who are caught between the do-nothing GOP and the Blue Dog Democrats. Governor Bredesen hasn't been very helpful either, as his concerns about increased Medicaid burdens on the state budget have been used by the GOP to block reform, rather than fix the bill.