Health debate in Congress could last well into December

Roll Call reports that after the Senate canceled the Columbus Day recess in October, it "will not be in session Nov. 11-13 and will take off the entire week of Thanksgiving, even though the chamber could be in session until Christmas to deal with health care reform. ... Leadership aides in both parties have said that they expect the chamber to be in session well into December and that weekend sessions may become necessary to complete the Senate's workload" (Stanton, 10/14).

On the House side, CQ Politics reports that "House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Wednesday that Congress will probably be in session until mid-December and possibly even later. ... Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hoyer and other Democratic leaders are still trying to meld the health bills passed by three House committees into one piece of legislation. And across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is just beginning the process of combining health bills produced by two different committees in his chamber." Hoyer also noted that "November will be a light period for the House, because of the Veterans Day and Thanksgiving holidays" (10/14).

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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.