Turning From Debt Debate, Some GOP House Members Renew Health Law Attack
The Hill: Back Home After Debt Debate, Healthcare Reform Is The Topic For GOP Lawmakers
Healthcare reform still loomed large in voters' minds last week as members of Congress began their traditional series of recess town hall meetings. The issue had drifted down the political agenda after the 2010 midterm elections. ... But now, after a debt-ceiling deal that left many Republican House members cold, some freshmen already have tried to frame their 'yea' votes by referring again to the healthcare bill. In one of the first town hall meetings of the break, on the morning of Aug. 2, freshman Republican Rep. Rob Woodall (Ga.) told a group of Rotarians in Forsyth County that the final debt deal cut roughly the same amount of spending that the Affordable Care Act would have incurred - about $900 billion (Viebeck, 8/6)
Meanwhile, a former Democratic member of Congress is turning to lobbying to help continue to influence health care policy.
The New York Times: Ex-Lawmaker Still A Friend Of Hospitals
Earl Pomeroy figured that Plan A was his career in Congress, where, over nearly two decades, as a North Dakota congressman he became a powerful advocate for the hospital industry. Now, after losing re-election last year ... he has moved on to Plan B: promoting their cause as a lobbyist. ... Just as Mr. Pomeroy once pushed in Congress to expand federal health care programs and block regulatory proposals that (hospital) industry executives considered burdensome, he and his former aide, Bob Siggins, now are pressing the Obama administration and Congress to drop a planned change in Medicare rules that could force dozens of long-term care hospitals to close or curtail services (Lipton, 8/6).
