After all the drama surrounding the down-to-the-wire Senate health care reform bill, which was finally passed on Christmas Eve, 2009, it’s a bit anticlimactic to have to report that President Obama is still having to urge Senate Democrats to ‘finish the job.’ There remain enough differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill to cast its future into doubt. Meanwhile, along more practical lines, House leadership is preparing to shepherd a series of smaller health care bills through their chamber. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quick to note that the smaller bills were not to be considered a substitute for the big bill. So, with Congressional Democrats doing their best headless chicken act and Congressional Republicans going very zen and calmly saying ‘no’ to absolutely everything, the stage is set for the first of those smaller bills to hit the pike.

That would be the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act, a piece of legislation that was supposed to have been introduced at the beginning of this month but that still evidently does not have a bill number. The bill is one of those very refreshing items that is brief and to the point. It is precisely two pages long and does nothing other than to cause federal anti-trust laws to apply to health insurance and medical malpractice insurance carriers, which is currently not the case. This one is slated for a vote later this week, provided that House Democrats can manage to suspend the rules and consider the bill without a Committee report. One suspects that will not be much of a problem. On the other hand, one also suspects that is as far is it may get. The Senate has enough on its plate to ignore all these little health care bills without noticeable effort.