Pelosi hasn't seen Senate health bill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday she hasn't yet seen the healthcare bill Senate Democrats are crafting.

Pelosi, under whose leadership the House finished its healthcare bill in early November, told reporters she hasn't seen the latest version of what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is crafting in the upper chamber.

"First of all, I haven't seen it," Pelosi told reporters at an end-of-year roundtable when asked if the House would accept whatever the Senate manages to pass.

"We haven't seen their bill, so I don't want to make a judgment about something that I haven't seen," she later added.

While details of the Senate bill have emerged in recent weeks, Reid hasn't yet released a final copy of his legislation, which would change even more substantially once the majority leader introduces his manager's amendment to the legislation -- an amendment expected to drop early next week.

A mix of 10 liberal and centrist Democratic senators worked to craft the latest Senate bill last week, and Reid has played his cards close to his vest since then, having released neither the legislative language nor the pending Congressional Budget Office score of the bill.

Pelosi said her deference to Reid was out of respect.

"Well, I, as a courtesy to the senator, have not said to him,'"What is in your bill?'" she said. "Because I think he tells his own Members that first, and they haven't shared that with us. So I have just been respectful about that."