Pete Stark: “Mr. Speaker, the press reports indicate that Republicans have reached a deal among themselves and at long last, after 2…”

“Mr. Speaker, the press reports indicate that Republicans have reached a deal among themselves and at long last, after 2 months, they want to appoint conferees, which I presume is for taking pictures and presenting us with a done deal. Not exactly what I would consider an open and fair legislative process. My colleagues across the aisle have purposely turned their backs on the best opportunity of the year for a bipartisan bill that would have been developed openly and fairly. It is completely backward from the normal process and is designed to end run the will of a majority of the Senate in opposition to medical savings accounts. Mr. Speaker, we do not know many, many of the important deals of the back room deal. If it is like previous ones that handed billions of dollars to the American Medical Association in exchange for support of an ill constructed and conceived Medicare bill, or if it is similar to a payoff of the supporters of GOPAC and the Republican Party to pay off the Golden Rule Insurance Co., we can be pretty sure that those deals are in there. The Senate passed a good bill. It did a better job on mental health amendments, which provided parity, which I assume the Republicans do not care about mental health. It did not deal roughshod with malpractice, and recognizes that 80,000 people are killed in hospitals each year.”