November 18th, 2009

New York Times reports:

People who are closely following the health care debate might not have to wait much longer for Senate Democrats to release their bill and for the Congressional Budget Office to assess its cost.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said he would move soon, The Times’s David Herszenhorn wrote, but Carl Hulse, also of The Times, notes that Mr. Reid is struggling to get the 60 votes needed to bring the legislation to the floor. The budget office’s analysis could help Democrats woo their party’s three holdouts and two independents instead of resorting to a measure that requires fewer votes but that the leaders consider less attractive.

A procedural vote could come as early as Friday. On Wednesday morning Senator Reid sits down with Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

In a move akin to the outcry over so-called “death panels,” Republicans on Tuesday assailed a federal panel’s recommendation that women under 40 forgo breast cancer screening as confirmation that the government was headed toward rationing health care, The Times’s Kevin Sack wrote. Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, dismissed the claim as a “scare tactic.”

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