Expecting a Mixed Reaction Across the Aisle, Democrats Plan to Offer Ideas on Drug Cost, SafetyHealth care is set to return to the national political stage in 2007, setting up partisan clashes in Congress that could end with rare vetoes from President Bush and help to define the 2008 presidential campaigns.
After years in which Iraq and national security dominated the debate -- and memories of the 1994 Clinton health plan debacle made major health-care changes politically radioactive -- the return of Democratic control in the House and Senate and the ramping up of the presidential campaigns are expected to bring health policy back into the legislative mix.
Two of the House Democrats' top priorities in their "Six for '06" campaign agenda involved health care. Within the first 100 hours of the new Congress, Democratic leaders intend to pass bills in the House that would lift restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research and require the government to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. Their counterparts in the Senate, where it takes 60 votes to keep a bill moving, say those issues will be on the agenda there, too, but are unlikely to advance as quickly.
Key lawmakers and their aides in both parties say other health-policy initiatives likely to surface include renewing funding for the state-federal health-insurance program for children of the working poor, expanding access to health insurance generally, and beefing up drug-safety efforts at the Food and Drug Administration. Also in the works are efforts to promote electronic medical records, ease restrictions on the importation of low-cost prescription drugs from Canada, devise a better way of paying doctors under Medicare and improve the subsidized drug coverage for low-income Medicare beneficiaries.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/24/AR2006122400589.html
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