Debbie Dingell: “here we go again. Once again our friends and colleagues on the Republican side have spent days and weeks behind closed…”

“here we go again. Once again our friends and colleagues on the Republican side have spent days and weeks behind closed doors. Our colleagues have been negotiating with themselves. They have been excluding Members on this side of the aisle. They have been excluding the President. They have been using their usual highly partisan style, strategy and technique. They have stuck a controversial and objectionable medical savings account provision in their bill to serve the Dole for President campaign and to assist special interest friends in the health insurance industry. Mr. Speaker, our motion to instruct is simple: It tells the House conferees, ``Do not reinvent the wheel.'' We have before us a good bill which came from the Senate. It was totally noncontroversial. It properly rejected a broad medical savings account provision as unwise and fiscally irresponsible. The instruction tells House conferees that with the exception of one provision on which further analysis may be needed, simply recede to the Senate. On that one provision, an important bipartisan amendment to provide mental health parity offered by our friends and colleagues, Mr. Domenici and Mr. Wellstone, it instructs the conferees to study the issue and to consider whether the provision would raise health insurance premiums.”