Negotiators get a visit, but end not yet in sight.(Medicare Conference)

Publication: Medicine & Health

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It was House Democrats that crashed the Oct. 30 meeting of Medicare negotiators, but House Republicans may prove the more serious obstacle for final passage of a Medicare bill.

Reps. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Marion Berry (D-AK), accompanied by several of their Democratic Ways and Means Committee colleagues, showed up at Ways and Means chair Bill Thomas' (R-CA) Capitol office, where a so-called core group of conferees have been attempting to negotiate an overhaul of the Medicare program. Rangel and Berry are both duly appointed conferees, but Sens. Max Baucus (MT) and John Breaux (LA) are the only Democrats that conference chair Thomas has deemed sufficiently interested in making a deal to be admitted to the negotiations. All other minority conferees, including Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle (SD), have been excluded.

That didn't change as a result of Rangel...

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