Don Nickles: “I hope this week the Senate will be able to pass a positive prescription drug proposal. It may be mission impossible. I…”

“I hope this week the Senate will be able to pass a positive prescription drug proposal. It may be mission impossible. I wish that was not the case. If we would have done it the ordinary way, the regular way, the way we have handled almost all Medicare bills in the last 20-some years, every single one except for one, it would have gone through the Finance Committee and been reported out with bipartisan support. Frankly, that bill would have been the basis, the foundation for reporting a bill that would eventually become law. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to do that in this case. This particular bill happens to be probably the most important and the most expensive expansion in Medicare history, more expensive than any other changes and amendments we have made to Medicare since its creation in 1965. Yet we haven't had a hearing in committee on this proposal or the other proposals. We haven't had a markup. We had some bipartisan meetings, but we didn't have a chance to have a bipartisan markup. Maybe it is because it was likely that the product to be reported wouldn't have been what the majority leader wanted.”