Blog - September 2009

The Senate Finance Committee, which is currently marking up the Baucus health care bill, voted today to defend the secret White House-PhRMA-Baucus deal. The vote today was on a Sen. Bill Nelson [D, FL]amendment to close the Medicare Part D coverage gap and allow states to negotiate drug fro prices dual eligibles, senior citizens eligible under both the Medicare and Medicaid programs. CBO has scored the amendment as saving $50 billion over ten years which could be used to reduce the cost of the...

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is set to name former Democratic National Committee Chairman Paul Kirk, 71, the interim senator to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Kirk, a close Kennedy confidante, was the choice of the late Sen. Kennedy's close family.

Sen. Patrick Leahy [D, VT] and Rep. John Conyers [D, MI-14] have thrown a new concept into the health care reform debate. They're pushing legislation to take away insurance companies' exemption from federal anti-trust laws.

Don't believe the hype. Nobody in Congress is considering going "nuclear" with health care legislation. Fox News and other media outlets may be saying otherwise, but they are wrong.

Requiring all individuals to get health insurance or pay a fine has long been considered one of the basic elements of reform that everyone in Congress could agree on. But on the first day of the Senate Finance Committee's health care mark-up, Senate Republicans began changing their tune: Advocates of a coverage mandate say it is needed to ensure that young, healthy people get insurance and contribute to the system. They say this will ease costs associated with an influx of less-healthy people ...

OpenCongress has the only online, fully citable version of the health care bill that is currently being debated. Help us build public knowledge by reading the bill and sharing it with your friends online.

The community that has built up around bills about unemployment benefits here at OpenCongress is a "community" in the truest sense of the word. In the spirit of that community, I thought I would use comments from the H.R. 3548 thread as the core of a blog post about the latest benefits extension. In particular, I'll single out nancym, who has done a remarkable job of tracking the legislation, contacting lawmakers and committees, and keeping her fellow users informed.

Rep. Alan Grayson is taking advantage of a legislative misfire by overzealous lawmakers. And he's asking anyone out there to help him.

The Massachusetts Senate has approved their bill to allowed Gov. Deval Patrick to appoint an interim senator to fill Ted Kennedy's seat until the state holds an election in January. The legislation has to jump through a few more procedural hoops, but it's now essentially on track towards giving Senate Democrats a 60-vote supermajority for when health care legislation comes to the floor. On the other hand, the 91-year old Democratic Senator Robert Byrd [WV] was rushed to the hospital today afte...

Check up what ProPublica dug up on the Blue Dog's health care task force leader, Rep. Mike Ross [D, AR-4] Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross - a Blue Dog Democrat playing a key role in the health care debate - sold a piece of commercial property in 2007 for substantially more than a county assessment (PDF) and an independent appraisal (PDF) say it was worth. The buyer: an Arkansas-based pharmacy chain with a keen interest in how the debate plays out. Ross sold the real estate in Prescott, Ark., to ...

Health care reform enters a critical moment today. Since the beginning of the year, Congress has settled on a basic framework for reform, four congressional committees have approved health care bills, and the public has reviewed and discussed the legislation more than any issue that has come through Congress in the past decade. Today, health care legislation moves into its final congressional committee - the one that's likely to produce the framework for a compromise designed to actually break a Republican filibuster and pass the Senate.

The mark-up of the Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill is currently underway. (You can watch the proceedings on C-Span here.) While much of this morning may be filled with vacuous speech-making by the committee's members, there are over 500 amendments to be voted on over the next few days. Slate has done an excellent job in creating a Google spreadsheet of every (or almost every) amendment to the bill. Check it out as a guide to the process.

With the Senate Finance Committee preparing to "mark up" its version of a health care reform bill and renewed interest in the progress in Afghanistan, it's been a little slow for news today. We'll try to pick that up tomorrow with a feature on the members of the Senate Finance Committee and updates on other pending legislation. For now, your links:

If there is a deal to be struck on the public option, Sen. Olympia Snowe's [R, ME] "trigger" proposal probably provides the framework. She's seeking to add here proposal to the Baucus bill this week as the Senate Finance committee begins the markup process.

With a full plate of 564 pending amendments, Sen. Max Baucus [D, MT] will take his health care bill to the full Senate Finance Committee this week to begin the actual process of debating and voting. This week's committee markup is the Senate's best chance for finding a bipartisan compromise on a health care bill that can pass under regular procedure.