Oct 7 2009
In the House, members are questioning if their version of the bill even matters,
Politico reports. "With the media following every turn of the Senate negotiations, some House Democrats have started to ask themselves whether all of the work crafting a House bill will even make a difference in the end, or whether they'll simply get steamrolled by a White House so eager for a compromise that the president will just use the Senate bill as the template" (O'Connor, 10/6).
Some House Republicans in the Republican Study Committee, in the meantime, will nevertheless meet with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to talk reform. According to
Roll Call, "[t]he RSC includes some of the most vehement critics of the Democrats' heath care reform plans. The RSC-Sebelius meeting is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. in the Capitol" (Kucinich, 10/5).
CongressDaily also reported on this meeting: "'I think they've grown weary of our protestations,' said Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., the RSC's chairman and a physician. He said he was referring to Republican complaints that they have been excluded by House Democrats and the Obama administration from the negotiations developing healthcare legislation." The RSC will continue to push for a meeting with Obama, he said (House, 10/6).
 This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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