[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 88 (Tuesday, July 7, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Page S7573]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     DEBATING THE HEALTH CARE BILL

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I know there has been some brouhaha this 
afternoon about not being able to debate a health care bill, and I came 
down here earlier today to talk about the bill we were on, the VA-HUD 
bill, an extremely important piece of legislation that was set 
regularly on this agenda. Amendments were being offered to it. 
Everybody has known for some time that we were going to be dealing with 
health care and managed care and HMOs and that sort of thing. It is 
certainly going to be coming up on our agenda when the time is right, 
and everybody will have full opportunity to debate that issue. I hope 
we do. I expect we can make some improvement in our health care policy 
in America.
  But the bill that we were on was important. I submit it was a 
political act by people in this body to derail where we were going, to 
introduce onto the VA-HUD bill this kind of massive change in agenda to 
try to create a debate on health care when this body was on another 
item. That is what the majority leader is for, to try to set agenda in 
a rational way. He has done that. We are going to be on health care 
later, but we should have stayed on the bill that we were on.

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