Conrad: Both House, Senate healthcare bills to face uphill fight

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (Nev.) healthcare bill "has a better chance of getting 60 votes" than does the proposal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) unveiled this morning, a key Senate Democrat said Thursday.

But as more Senate centrists begin to distance themselves from Reid and his opt-out public option plan -- a bill against which at least one lawmaker has already threatened a filibuster -- it is unclear whether the Senate's bill is similarly in political jeopardy, added Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

"It's hard to predict what will get 60 votes. I think the Finance Committee's approach has a better chance of getting 60 votes, and the Finance Committee's approach of course got 94 percent of the American peopled covered," Conrad told CNBC, adding he needed more detail about the House's new bill before he "rendered a judgment."

Despite Conrad's stated faith in the Finance Committee's effort, the panel's draft has undergone a serious transformation since Conrad and his colleagues voted to advance it earlier this month. At the behest of many Democrats, Reid's latest version of the bill includes a compromise public option that would allow states to decline participation in the government plan -- an edit, Conrad predicted in a separate interview on Fox News, that could actually do the party more harm than good.

"Even then, I'm not certain it has the votes," he said of Reid's decision to include a federalist public plan. "The model that works the best is the not-for-profit insurance that's not government run or government controlled; that's just a fact."

Conrad, of course, is slightly biased in this respect; he was the primary architect of the health insurance co-op plan that underscored the Senate Finance Committee's proposal. But his remarks on Thursday nonetheless illustrate the political difficulties House and Senate Democrats are likely to face when they bring their measures to their respective floors next month.

"At the end of the day, if the votes aren't available, then modifications are going to have to be made," Conrad told Fox News, adding that the Democrats need GOP votes, including that of Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine), if they hope to defeat a cloture filibuster.

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