Yeah, that was kinda out of the blue. You can see why Obama wanted it done quickly- by the end of last year. Anything can happen.
I think they should pass the Senate bill in the House and immediately pass a bunch of corrections they would have made in the combined bill anyway. That doesn't look as likely as it should be, though. The other option being discussed is to try to create new, smaller bills with the important parts separated out and pass them one at a time, but that doesn't make sense to me because they're all interconnected and it would be really bad to do some things without others.