Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Key Day In Stimulus Talks As Democrats Await GOP Proposal
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding out one more day for an eleventh-hour agreement with Republicans on a coronavirus relief package, hoping to clinch a longshot deal as talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin drag on this week. After a 50-minute conversation on Tuesday, Pelosi and Mnuchin will speak again Wednesday in what is likely the final chance to deliver trillions of dollars in relief to struggling Americans ahead of the November election. (Caygle, Zanona and Ferris, 9/29)
House Republicans are rallying members to oppose a new scaled-down coronavirus relief package from Democrats. The GOP effort comes as negotiations between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin showed signs of progress Tuesday on a COVID-19 aid bill after a weeks-long impasse. (Brufke, 9/29)
In other news from Capitol Hill —
It's not often the minority leader takes control of the Senate floor. But that's just what Chuck Schumer did Tuesday. Schumer moved to set up a vote on legislation that would block the Justice Department from supporting litigation to overturn Obamacare, a rare procedural step for Democrats. The move is a not-so-subtle rebuke of the Trump administration’s backing of a high-stakes lawsuit to strike down the entire law, which is slated to go up before the Supreme Court just one week after Election Day. (Levine and Luthi, 9/29)
The House Oversight Committee will hold two days of hearings this week with six drug industry CEOs. The hearings are the presumptive climax of an 18-month investigation first launched by the late Rep. Elijah Cummings in 2019. The hearing could be the most perilous yet for drug makers, who have managed to avoid any major missteps at the multiple congressional drug pricing hearings that preceded this one. (Florko, 9/29)
