Is there a Plan B?
The big news today is that the Speaker has come pretty close to closing the door on the idea that the House pass the Senate version of the health care bill. Our colleague Sophia Yan was at her news conference, and reports:
Here’s the story I did on Scott Brown and the Massachusetts election for the new issue of the magazine.
This morning, I sat down with Scott Brown and talked to him about why he won and what it means. He had a lot to say about health care, including what it would mean if the Democrats decide to push the Senate version of their bill through the House:
Here’s my report from last night for TIME.com.
6: 32 p.m.: I’m set up in the ballroom where the Scott Brown campaign will be holding their election night party, and am happy to report the wi-fi is working just fine. What to watch for tonight? There won’t be any exit polls, so people will be counting the ballots the old-fashioned way. It could be a very late night. Or maybe not. …
NOTE: I’ll be updating this post throughout the day.
I’ve been up here for only a day, but it’s hard to detect anything that looks good for Democratic nominee Martha Coakley, the state’s Attorney General.
Her election-eve rally at a gym in a Framingham middle school was three-quarters empty; someone on the campaign had pulled a …
Latest email from Jay Newton-Small:
The Boston Globe’s Adrian Walker has an interesting take on how Martha Coakley came to find herself in this spot three days before an election that everyone expected to be a blowout. And the NYT looks at the implications for the health care bill. We are once again hearing talk of using the reconciliation process in the Senate.
UPDATE: …
Please follow Jay Newton-Small on Twitter. Her tweets are heartbreaking:
2late, 2late, they say. I tell myself that i’m doing more good writing than digging, but it’s hard not to agree w/them. Heart wrenching
UPDATE: Here is Jay’s account on TIME.com.
The Associated Press reports that in the wake of President Obama’s decision to push for a shorter period of exclusivity for biologics, the drug lobby is threatening to walk away from its deal to support the bill:
It was a surprise indeed. Most people had figured that the biologic drug industry had sealed the deal for 12 years of protection from generic competition when it succeeded in getting language to that effect in both the House and Senate health care bills. Although President Obama had supported shorter protection of seven years,* there had …
A while back, Michael Scherer and I wrote this story about how the biotech industry has been one of the big winners in the health care debate.
Maybe not so much, it now appears. The New York Times reports that President Obama may be making a last stand to bring lower-cost generic biologics to market more quickly:
