Congressional Leaders Begin to Develop Health Care Legislation

Congressional committees in the House and Senate continue to discuss and work towards crafting comprehensive health care reform. The issue remains a top priority of the President and Democratic leaders, but specifics of the reform proposal have not been formulated. The leaders remain committed to an ambitious timeline of drafting a bill in the next couple of weeks followed by final votes on a bill towards the end of July. Democrats have given themselves the added advantage of including special instructions in the recently passed budget resolution that would give Congress the ability to pass legislation with a simple majority rather then customary 60 vote threshold required on controversial legislation in the Senate. The instructions come with caveats, but AGC has advocated the important legislation deserves full consideration and should not be crafted by one party. In response to the pending legislation, AGC has created a task force to evaluate the industry's top priorities for health care reform and to evaluate the bill and its impact when it is available. In the interim AGC is surveying members to identify key issues.