That’s right, folks. Health Care reform is back from the dead! As the Chicago Tribune notes (in an editorial of the same name): “So their [health care] bills are like zombies, floating in the netherworld. Not quite dead, clinging to life only because Democratic leaders keep whispering about this legislative maneuver called reconciliation.” So what does the Return of the Living Obamacare Bill mean?

There has been some interesting buzz around Washington, D.C. in the run-up to the bipartsan health care meeting between the president and the congressional parties. It actually helps to think of it in game theoretic terms. There is quite a bit going on that lends itself to strategic competition.

The first: should the Republicans show up for the health care meeting with Obama?

Let’s acknowledge from the outset that the stated purpose of the meeting–a ‘discussion’ of ideas on health care reform with an eye towards a bipartisan compromise– is almost certainly not the aim of either party. Obama can’t make substantial changes to the current bill without a) losing his liberal base and b) starting over. From the Republican perspective, they’ve won the public relations war on health care and are concerned with snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

So on our first question: does it make sense for the Republicans to go? If they don’t, Obama and the Democrats could paint the Republicans as partisan and uninterested in any reform (with them as the opposite, naturally). However, if they do go and don’t compromise with Obama (i.e. substantially adopt the Obama reform plan), then he may do that anyway.

Here is how the Reps addressed it in their weekly address:

On the Democrat side of things, they’ve lost the public on health care. They are looking at a very bad election enviornment in November. Indeed, their intransigence on health care could percipitate a wave election. Most non-partisan observers I have seen believe the Dems should forget comprehensive health care reform, pass something incremental, and pivot to jobs. But there are clearly substantial forces on the Left which continue to push for health care no matter what, and that may make a defeat on health care particularly unpalatable. The Democrats may be able to use “reconciliation” to avoid a filibuster, but the costs of such an unprecedented parlimentary move, to get an unpopular bill passed…could be devestating when they face voters in November. The signs are certainly all pointing in that direction.

And even if they decide to try reconciliation (a process designed for budget changes–not for the creation of a new entitlement), it isn’t clear that the bill could pass. This problem asrises from the fact the Senate and the House passed VERY different versions of Obamacare. And both sides hate the other side’s bill. The problem here is very reminicscient of the problem inherent to the Prisoner’s Dilemma: lack of trust. As the Tribune editoral argues:

There’s a problem: Trust. House Democrats don’t trust Republicans, of course. But they also don’t trust their colleagues in the Senate to pass the changes. So House and Senate Democrats are locked in a procedural scrum, trying to figure out how all of this might work.

Just like the two prisoners in our game theoretic problem, the House Democrats can’t be sure the Senate Dems won’t renege (rat) on a promise to pass a ‘fix’ to the Senate bill using reconciliation. A pareto optimal outcome for the Democrats might be a possible strategic choice (House passes Senate bill, Senate passes fix using reconciliation), but it isn’t a Nash equilibrium. Hence it will be difficult to get the House Dems to take the proverbial “leap of faith” and pass the reform bill and hope the Senate Dems cooperate.

Ultimately my guess is that the Republicans go and meet with Obama at the “Health Care Summit”, that no substantive compromise emerges as a result of that meeting, and that all the Democratic talk about reconcilliation is a bluff, or, they don’t have the votes even if they try it. What I’m not sure of is where they go from there. The Democrats are unlikely to give up and accept ‘nothing’…but they are also unlikely to spend the months necessary to start over and come up with a more incremental approach. But forcing a bill clearly rejected by the American people through on a party-line vote using procedural tricks…well, I have trouble coming up with a more politically risky strategy than that. It would be an unprecedented act that could yield unprecedented electoral consequences.

If they do pass health care this way…well, let’s just say I wouldn’t want to have a “D” after my name on the ballot in Novemeber.