Greg Ganske: “tonight we will talk about two aspects of health care that are important. The first will be about the conference…”

“tonight we will talk about two aspects of health care that are important. The first will be about the conference committee that is going on in regards to the HMO reform bill that passed both the House and the Senate. For our colleagues and constituents, it should be noted that the bipartisan Managed Care Reform Act of 1999, the Norwood-Dingell-Ganske bill passed the House back in October 275 to 151. The Senate bill had passed sometime before that. So the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader in the Senate, as well as the minority leaders in both bodies, appointed Members of Congress to meet together to iron out the differences between the bill that passed the House and the bill that passed the Senate. Once that is done, then the unified bill is brought back, both to the House and to the Senate for a vote. If it would pass in both Houses, then it would be sent to the President for signature and become law. Now, the conference committee has been meeting for some time. I am told that they are currently working on internal and external appeals. Even though I helped write the bill, I unfortunately was not named to the conference, and I cannot be more specific than that. I would note that, of all the Republicans from the House that were named to the conference, only one actually voted for the bill that passed the House with such a large margin.”