House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) still sees a slight chance that the Democratic-controlled Congress can wrap up work on a landmark health care bill by Christmas - all while insisting the House wants a full say in the final version.



"We would do almost anything if it meant we would pass health care for all Americans (by) the Christmas holidays," Pelosi told reporters Thursday. "Maybe we can't," she said, in which case Congress could deliver "a New Year's present for the American people."



But "anything" doesn't mean she's willing to just accept the Senate bill.



"We would like to see a full conference" negotiation with the Senate, the speaker said, meaning she wants to appoint House negotiators to hash out a final version with their Senate counterparts before scheduling a vote on the combined package.



Conference negotiations can sometimes take months, but the speaker suggested Thursday that negotiators could wrap up these health care talks over a single weekend if the Senate finishes its bill by the end of next week.

That's an incredibly abbreviated timeline, given the amount of work both chambers have put into the negotiations over their respective bills. But it may suggest the speaker is willing to accept much of what the Senate produces.

Without commenting directly on the tentative Senate deal, Pelosi told reporters, "There's certainly a great deal of appeal about putting people 55 and older on Medicare" - one plank of the pending compromise to gut a controversial public option.



"These bills are perhaps 75 percent compatible," she said.



Of course, the remaining 25 percent includes not-so-little issues, like abortion funding, immigration, when the new programs begin, when – and how far – to close a gap in prescription-drug coverage under Medicare and whether to provide optional government-sponsored insurance, among other things. Oh, yeah, and how to pay for the bill.



That's a lot of work for a weekend.

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