House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) announcement that the House will pass legislation repealing health insurers’ exemption from federal anti-trust legislation, elicited a standing ovation this morning at the Democratic National Committee’s Winter Meeting. Language removing the exemption was originally part of the House health care bill and Pelosi hopes that passing the provision separately would recommit the party to health care and narrow the differences with the Senate bill, which did not include the repeal.

“It is time for us to end the unfair advantage insurance companies have over American families an that is why next week the House will act to repeal the special anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies,” Pelosi said.

Watch it:

The legislation will do little to lower costs as a stand alone measure. But combined with the competition created by comprehensive health care reform, removing the exemption would allow the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prevent insurers from engaging in the kind of deceptive and egregious conduct that has contributed to high health care costs.

In other words, the repeal is just the first step in restoring real competition to health insurance markets. Policy makers must pass real health care reform and do more to shift the FTC’s focus towards industries where there is the most consumer harm.

Yesterday, President Obama reiterated that the “next step” for health care reform is “a meeting where I’m sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts and let’s just go through these bills.” “Their ideas, our ideas. Let’s just walk through them in a methodical way,” Obama said.

But during today’s press gaggle at the White House, Robert Gibbs said that Democrats have not actually scheduled any meetings with Republicans:

REPORTER: Any meetings in the works with Republicans?

GIBBS: I will point you to what he said with Republicans last Friday and in SOTU “in wanting to hear and see more ideas.” Nothing scheduled right now.

REPORTER: Would he like Pelosi to call for a vote?

GIBBS: They’re still working with Capitol Hill on the best way forward.

Some progressives have argued that the Senate health care bill already represents a compromise between Republican and Democratic ideas. They suggest that Republicans would not be willing to negotiate with Democrats in good faith and believe that passing the Senate health care bill, alongside a package of fixes using reconciliation, represents the best chance for achieving comprehensive health care reform before the end of the year.

On a recent conference call with reporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said reconciliation represented the best way forward on reform and refused to discuss a ‘plan B’ for reform. Still, she insisted that “we will get the job done for the American people one way or another.”

Retiring Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) has supported the use of reconciliation when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House. “We are using the rules of the Senate here,” said Gregg in 2005 as he defended using reconciliation to open up drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. “Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don’t think so.” But now that Democrats are considering using reconciliation to pass a package of ‘fixes’ to the Senate health care bill, Gregg is accusing them of “embracing” Hugo Chavez’s “politics” and “running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River.”

In today’s POLITICO, Gregg warns that “Democrats may attempt to use reconciliation to short-circuit every senator’s right and responsibility to fully debate a measure that will affect one-sixth of our economy” and laments that “only a simple majority” will be required “for final passage”:

A reconciliation package would be hurried through in less than three working days. In the U.S. Senate, a minority of one usually has the unique right to be heard. But through the procedural confines of reconciliation, only a select few get to speak. Major policy changes that have long-term effects deserve thoughtful consideration and lots of sunshine — using reconciliation would wave that away. Think about how long your child will deliberate before choosing a university, how long it takes to assess investment or retirement plans for your family’s future or even how long it takes to find your next home. Doesn’t health reform deserve the same careful consideration?

Gregg is right to argue that reconciliation “first emerged to give Congress a tool to help bring spending and revenues in line with the fiscal policy” and ultimately lower the deficit. Since the House and Senate first used the budget reconciliation process in 1980, they passed 19 reconciliation bills that “have been enacted into law,” including major health care reform initiatives. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) notes in a recent report, “[r]econciliation legislation enacted in 1997 created the Children’s Health Insurance Program,” the Medicare Advantage program in 1997 (then called ‘Medicare+Choice), and COBRA.

In 2001 and 2003, Gregg and his fellow Republicans broke with tradition and used the reconciliation process to “enact a large tax cut that greatly increased federal deficits and debt.” Now that they’re in the minority, they’re opposing using the process on legislation that would result in the largest deficit reduction in the nation’s history.

Should Democrats decide to take the reconciliation route, they’d be passing legislation that has been debated for over a year in the House and Senate– a debate Gregg actually voted against. That’s an example of implementing the agenda Americans voted for in 2008, not short-circuiting “responsibility.”

After all, as rising Republican star Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) admitted in April, Democrats have the “right” to pass health care reform through the reconciliation process. “It is their right. It is what they can do,” he said.