New Senate health bill to be topic of Democrats closed-door meeting

The Associated Press: "Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada met Wednesday morning at the Capitol with Vice President Joe Biden to go over the game plan on health care. Crucial to the White House and Reid is winning over a handful of reluctant moderate Democrats." The AP reports that Reid "planned to present the bill to Democratic senators at a closed-door meeting late Wednesday afternoon. His goal was to deliver a formal cost and coverage estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, and put the legislation on track toward a floor debate within days." He also alerted health reform allies that Senate Democrats planned to hold a noon rally for the bill Thursday on Capitol Hill (Alonso-Zaldivar, 11/18).

The Hill: "Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) win support for a healthcare vote." Also at the meeting was Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). Biden was expected to meet with other Senators Wednesday "as Reid tries to pull his caucus together for procedural votes" to bring the health bill to the Senate floor. "Since Republicans are all expected to vote against a motion to begin debate ... Reid must win the support of all 60 senators who caucus with Democrats, including Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman" (Bolton, 11/18).

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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.