The congressman made only a brief statement, telling reporters, "If you don't mind, I don't take questions." But he did say that'd told Pelosi "from the very, very beginning" that he was willing to step aside, at least temporarily.

Of course, that's not what he was saying last night (as many other times):

Earlier Tuesday evening, Rangel himself publicly refuted news stories that he planned to surrender his gavel.

Asked after a meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) if he was still going to be the chairman, Rangel said, "You bet your life."

Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan paying Medicare rates -- generally 80 percent of private sector rates -- or controlled by the secretary of health and human services.

"We have an agreement with the White House that I'm very confident will be seen all the way through conference," one of the industry lobbyists, Chip Kahn, director of the Federation of American Hospitals, told a Capitol Hill newsletter.

The proposal I've put forward gives Americans more control over their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable. It builds on the current system where most Americans get their health insurance from their employer. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Because I can tell you that as the father of two young girls, I wouldn't want any plan that interferes with the relationship between a family and their doctor.

Essentially, my proposal would change three things about the current health care system:

First, it would end the worst practices of insurance companies. No longer would they be able to deny your coverage because of a pre-existing condition. No longer would they be able to drop your coverage because you got sick. No longer would they be able to force you to pay unlimited amounts of money out of your own pocket. No longer would they be able to arbitrarily and massively raise premiums like Anthem Blue Cross recently tried to do in California. Those practices would end.

Second, my proposal would give uninsured individuals and small business owners the same kind of choice of private health insurance that Members of Congress get for themselves. Because if it's good enough for Members of Congress, it's good enough for the people who pay their salaries. The reason federal employees get a good deal on health insurance is that we all participate in an insurance marketplace where insurance companies give better rates and coverage because we give them more customers. This is an idea that many Republicans have embraced in the past. And my proposal says that if you still can't afford the insurance in this new marketplace, we will offer you tax credits to do so tax credits that add up to the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history. After all, the wealthiest among us can already buy the best insurance there is, and the least well-off are able to get coverage through Medicaid. But it's the middle-class that gets squeezed, and that's who we have to help.

Now, it's true that all of this will cost money about $100 billion per year. But most of this comes from the nearly $2 trillion a year that America already spends on health care. It's just that right now, a lot of that money is being wasted or spent badly. With this plan, we're going to make sure the dollars we spend go toward making insurance more affordable and more secure. We're also going to eliminate wasteful taxpayer subsidies that currently go to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, set a new fee on insurance companies that stand to gain as millions of Americans are able to buy insurance, and make sure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of Medicare.

The bottom line is, our proposal is paid for. And all new money generated in this plan would go back to small businesses and middle-class families who can't afford health insurance. It would lower prescription drug prices for seniors. And it would help train new doctors and nurses to provide care for American families.

Finally, my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions families, businesses, and the federal government. We have now incorporated most of the serious ideas from across the political spectrum about how to contain the rising cost of health care ideas that go after the waste and abuse in our system, especially in programs like Medicare. But we do this while protecting Medicare benefits, and extending the financial stability of the program by nearly a decade.

Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill, which reduces most people's premiums and brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion over the next two decades. And those aren't my numbers they are the savings determined by the CBO, which is the Washington acronym for the nonpartisan, independent referee of Congress.

So this is our proposal. This is where we've ended up. It's an approach that has been debated and changed and I believe improved over the last year. It incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans including some of the ideas that Republicans offered during the health care summit, like funding state grants on medical malpractice reform and curbing waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care system. My proposal also gets rid of many of the provisions that had no place in health care reform provisions that were more about winning individual votes in Congress than improving health care for all Americans.

Baird, a clinical psychologist first elected in 1998, has young twin sons, and told Pacific Northwest reporters in December the grind of lawmaking was wearing on him. You might think the fact that he's retiring would free him from political concerns about the healthcare bill. Still, even though he won't have to face voters again, Baird has substantive and political worries about what leadership is asking members to do.

"The House bill was less bad than the status quo, but that doesn't make it good in my mind," he said. By building on the existing structures of various Medicare programs, Medicaid, S-CHIP and other state health programs, the reform bill maintains what Baird sees as inefficiencies that should be fixed. And while he's all for banning insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and some of the bill's other provisions, he's concerned about how to explain it to voters.

"We had a series of briefings in the Democratic caucus," he said. "At the final briefing before the vote, there were -- I would guess -- 30 staffers, most of them master's or Ph.D's, many of whom spent their entire life on healthcare; experts in the arcanery of this bill, and they would stand up one by one and answer questions as they arose from the caucus... You have to say, so what's the average person supposed to do to make sense of this if it takes 30 Ph.D career staff members to explain it? And that's after months of prior explanation."

The process Democrats have been left with to finish the bill also concerns him. Because Republicans will filibuster any new Senate bill, the House will have to pass the Senate's version, then use reconciliation to combine them.

"We're going to be asked, 'Okay, up or down,' on a Senate bill, under reconciliation rules which we don't know will the Senate vote for it, will it be included under reconciliation," he said. "So they're going to say, 'Okay, vote for this bill, because it would do X,' but under reconciliation, X may not make it past the parliamentarian's gate... We're not sure what's in it [and] we don't know whether it'll pass the Senate anyway."

Meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made a major concession, signaling Tuesday that she may be ready to accept the Senate's language on two issues that have divided her Caucus -- immigration and abortion -- in the name of getting an overhaul passed. Neither issue can be addressed under a reconciliation bill because stringent rules governing such bills require provisions to have a direct budgetary impact.

"This is not an immigration bill. It is not an abortion bill. It is a bill about affordable health care for all Americans," she said.

However, leaders in both chambers are still negotiating what would be included in a reconciliation package and cannot secure the votes for any deal until they reach an agreement. Democratic leaders were mum Tuesday when they emerged from a bicameral leadership meeting with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and health care adviser Nancy-Ann DeParle.

"It was a very good discussion," Emanuel said afterward. "We worked through a number of issues as it relates to the legislation."

Pelosi said she remains focused on finalizing the substance of a bill and figuring out what the Senate can pass. From there, House Democratic leaders "will take that substance ... to our Members," she said.