House Panel Approves Bill on Prescription Drug Benefits
By: Robert Pear and David Stout
NY Times, June 21, 2002
WASHINGTON, June 21 ≈ After an all-night session, a House
committee this morning approved a bill to provide prescription drug
benefits to the elderly under Medicare, setting up a vote by the full
House of Representatives next week.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce endorsed the bill by a vote
of 30 to 23, largely along party lines. The action came two days after the
House Ways and Means Committee, which also has jurisdiction over Medicare,
approved a similar measure.
The House Rules Committee must now iron out differences between the two
committees' versions, although nothing appears to stand in the way of a
vote on the House floor before the Fourth of July recess. The Energy and
Commerce Committee made one small change in the dollar figures endorsed by
the Ways and Means panel two days ago, setting the limit on out-of-pocket
spending by beneficiaries to $3,700 a year, $100 lower than what Ways and
Means members approved.
But it is unlikely that a bill will emerge from the full Congress any
time soon, since the House is controlled by the Republicans and the Senate
by Democrats. And no prescription-drug proposal in the Senate has the 60
votes that are required to shut off debate in that chamber.
Nonetheless, the vote by the Energy and Commerce Committee this morning
was significant, since it cleared the way for House passage, which in turn
will put political pressure on the Senate as the elections draw near.
President Bush generally supports the Republican-backed proposal
nearing its final form in the House, although he started out wanting
legislation that would spend $190 billion over 10 years rather than the
$310 billion envisioned by House lawmakers.
Senators have been talking about spending $400 billion to $500 billion
over a decade, so the two Houses of Congress may have to work hard to
bridge their differences once the Senate adopts its version.
Drug companies support the Republicans' general approach, which depends
on competing private insurers to devise and market drug insurance policies
≈ a product that does not exist.
Democrats have described the emerging Republican bill as a gift to the
drug industry, "a political payoff," as Representative Frank
Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, put it the other day.
But the overnight debate that ended with the vote of the Energy and
Commerce Committee at 8:25 this morning, while spirited, was not bitterly
partisan. The members may have had enough of harsh words for the time
being. Or they may have been tired from a Thursday night baseball game
between Democrats and Republicans. In any event, committee members gave
their chairman, Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, a round of applause.
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