Schumer: Medicare, prescription drugs hold up final deal
By Alexander Bolton - 10/26/21 03:16 PM EDT
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters Tuesday that negotiators still haven’t reached agreement on language to expand Medicare benefits and lower the price of prescription drugs, two major pieces of their agenda, but insisted “a final deal is within reach.”
Schumer signaled to reporters that Democrats are much closer to agreement on climate provisions, which he promised would make a “robust” contribution to addressing global warming.
But he acknowledged that two of Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) top priorities, expanding Medicare and cutting the cost of prescription drugs, remain unresolved.
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The other holdups are a disagreement over creating a Medicaid-type program to expand health care coverage in states that opted out of expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the length of a national paid family leave program, and a proposal to empower the IRS to broadly review banking activity to find unreported tax obligations.
“I believe that we will get this done and we will get it done soon,” Schumer said after a caucus meeting. “No one ever said that passing transformational legislation like this would be easy but are on track to get it done.
more
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/578547-schumer-medicare-prescription-drugs-among-holdups-to-final-deal
