When Republican Sen. Tom Coburn forced the the reading of a 767-page single-payer amendment from Bernie Sanders – a task estimated to take 8-12 hours – it looked like most of us could pack it in for the day. But after nearly three hours of reading, Sanders found a way to stop the madness. He withdrew his amendment and is now giving a …
Heeeeeeeere we go. Right now in the Senate chamber, GOP delay tactics on the Democratic health care reform bill are in full swing. The Senate clerk is reading out aloud the text of an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders that would insert a single-payer system into the health care bill. The process of verbally entering amendments into the …
Tonight the Senate began voting on amendments to the health care bill for the first time in days. Near the top of the agenda: an amendment from Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan that would have allowed U.S. pharmacies and drug wholesalers to “reimport” drugs from foreign countries. It was was voted down 51-48. (Amendments need 60 votes to …
OK, so Howard Dean doesn’t have an actual vote, but his contention that Democrats should kill the public option-less Senate bill and instead push pieces of health care reform through via reconciliation is still significant. Greg Sargent at the The Plum Line got early word of a public radio interview with Dean scheduled to air in a few …
Progressives are sad. It now appears that the public option will be stripped out of the Senate health reform bill. Joe Lieberman said he would filibuster legislation that included a public option, so he is the villain of the moment, but other key senators – including Democrat Ben Nelson – had also voiced strong opposition to a …
Senators Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders and Al Franken just introduced an amendment to the Senate health reform legislation that will make the unions happy. They proposed eliminating the bill’s tax on so-called “Cadillac health plans” and replacing it with a new tax on immensely rich Americans. The new tax would be 5.4% and would …
The Senate health reform bill is in a procedural holding pattern right now. Even though the body will be in session over the weekend, Majority Leader Harry Reid has put off votes on the bill while he waits for the Congressional Budget Office to evaluate a new Democratic proposal that could strip the public option out of the bill. In my …
The Associated Press and New York Times are reporting tonight that the 10 senators tapped to negotiate an alternative to or compromise on the Senate health reform bill’s public option have dropped the idea of a government-run health insurance plan altogether. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters that the group is sending …
Lately, there has been no shortage of criticism that the Democratic health care bill doesn’t do enough to cut health care spending. My colleague Karen Tumulty had a great story in the magazine recently about how cost-containment provisions in health reform legislation have been whittled down. Right now, on the Senate floor, a group of …
The scuttle around Capitol Hill today is that public option devotees in the Senate are considering giving up the fight – in exchange for some rather hefty parting gifts. But before we get too far, let’s clear one thing up – again. The public option “alternative” – which would replace the opt-out public plan currently in the …
If the weekend is any guide, the Senate health reform bill is not likely to undergo much tweaking. Between Friday and Sunday, despite hours of debate on the Senate floor, the only amendments that passed were those from Democrats simply reiterating things the bill already calls for. One sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was a “sense …
UPDATE: Since publishing this post about the US Preventive Services Task Force around 2 p.m., I have been told by the White House that my interpretation of the Senate legislative language is off. This was, incidentally, the interpretation of several non-partisan policy experts I spoke to as well, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is …
The U.S. Preventive Task Force is under fire this week after it issued new clinical guidelines recommending that women 40-49 forgo annual mammograms unless they have certain risk factors, like genetic mutations that make them more susceptible to breast cancer. The task force also said self-exams are useless and recommended women over 50 …
