Reconciliation is on the menu. The AP reports that Democrats are still open to bipartisanship, but preparing for a one-party push. Politico and the Wall Street Journal report that Democrats are considering a new strategy -- split health reform legislation into two parts. One part would deal with budgetary aspects of reform, and the other would deal with policy, such as regulating insurers. Under reconciliation, the budget part of health reform could pass in the Senate with 51 votes. The main reform policy part would still need 60.

The strategy responds to a risk in using budget reconciliation to pass major health reform -- under the rules, important provisions in a health reform bill could be cut, even if more than half the Senate favors them. If the provision is deemed irrelevant to the budget, it can be thrown out. Even popular reform ideas, such as preventing insurers from dropping people because of pre-existing conditions, could be cut.

Conservatives have warned that reconciliation could be ugly. "A reconciliation bill could make health care look like Swiss cheese with all kinds of holes in it," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said at a Kaiser Family Foundation briefing earlier this year. Splitting the bill into two may alleviate this concern, but it wouldn't solve every problem -- procedural or political. The public option for health insurance coverage is still a matter of great contention.

While the White House insists it has not given up on bi-partisan negotiations, many Republicans are calling for Democrats to scale back reform plans, or scrap them entirely and start over. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) got a great deal of attention earlier this summer by calling health care reform Obama's "Waterloo" -- a chance to cripple his administration politically rather than achieve consensus on health reform for the millions of Americans who need it. The three Republicans in the Senate Finance committee "Gang of Six," are under pressure from both sides. "Liberals think they're watering down a far-reaching health-care bill, and conservatives think they may give Democrats bipartisan support for a left-leaning bill," reports Politico.

The Wall Street Journal offers a good breakdown of the proposed process here:

We've come a long way in health reform this year -- farther than we've ever gone before as a nation -- but we've still got a long way to go. Pondering the use of the budget reconciliation process can heat up tempers pretty quickly. But we've got to remember the goal of health reform is not political gain. The goal is to do the right thing by providing affordable, sustainable, quality coverage to all Americans. What we get from health reform is more important than how we get there.