07-13-2002

HEALTH: Senate Braces for Rx Drug Debate

With Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle, D-S.D., still vowing to
begin floor debate next week on prescription drug legislation, two
committees scrambled this week to produce a measure that could serve as a
base bill. Members of the Senate Finance Committee met privately in an
effort to reach consensus on a Medicare drug benefit, hoping to merge two
very different proposals. One is a Democratic-backed bill, sponsored by
Sens. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Zell Miller, D-Ga., that would add a new
drug benefit to Medicare itself. The second is a private-sector approach
devised by a so-called tripartisan group that includes Finance ranking
member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sens. John Breaux, D-La., James M.
Jeffords, I-Vt., Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah.
Meanwhile, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee
voted 16-5 on July 11 to approve a bill designed to expand opportunities
to get generic drugs into the marketplace. Shortly before the Fourth of
July recess, the House approved a Medicare prescription drug bill by a
221-208 vote.


CongressDaily's Final Word


"Well, thank goodness I won't have to make that
decision."


-Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott, when asked on July 9 how he would
vote if Congress were debating storing the nation's nuclear waste in his
home state of Mississippi, rather than in Nevada


Julie Rovner and April Fulton/CongressDaily

National Journal