Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) believes that the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee’s version of health care reform legislation, which includes a public option, is right. (0:29)
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said he is confident that a public option in the merged bill and says he fails to see how an alternative non-profit health care co-op could work. (0:25)
Travis Martinez, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who chairs the Senate Heath, Education, Labor and Pensions Commitee, asserted Friday that health care reform legislation will be passed by late December.
“The merged health care reform bill, will be on the President’s desk before Christmas, and yes it will have a public option,” said Harkin during a conference call with reporters. “It will have a good strong public option.”
When asked on what shape the public option will take, the Senator acknowledged that there are three viable options but is heavily promoting his committee’s option plan, because, “it does not rely on medicare reimbursement data and would be self sufficient.”
During a Democratic Caucus meeting the majority agreed on the HELP public option, but the Iowa senator recognized that if a public option is included, it would be a hard battle for the required 60 votes.
The Senator estimates that the merged bill will be back from the Majority Leader’s office sometime next week, then will head to the CBO office for scoring. Harkin believes the plan will cost around $900 billion over a ten year period.
Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) introduced bicameral legislation called the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act that would make it easier for older workers to show that they have been victims of age discrimination.
The legislation is aimed at combating a recent Supreme Court decision, Gross v. FBL Financial, that essentially resulted in victims of age discrimination no longer being able to prove that age was a motivating factor in an adverse employment decision.
“We intend to make certain that … all older workers in this country enjoy the full protection of the law,” said Harkin.
“Preserving the Age Discrimination and Employment Act is important to ensure that the great progress we have made in widening the doors of opportunity for all Americans continues in the future. I am concerned that the [aforementioned Supreme Court decision] will allow employers to discriminate on the basis of age with impunity,” said Leahy.
by Christina Lovato, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service
“To say that food safety in this country is a patchwork system is just giving it too much credit. Food safety in America has too often become a hit-or-miss gamble, and that is truly frightening… When Americans can’t count on the safety of basic items like peanut butter that goes into our kids sandwiches… It’s a healthy food… if that’s not safe then we have to ask what is.” said Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA.)
In a full hearing today, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry listened while witnesses and Senators discussed the most recent peanut butter recall. On January 16, the Connecticut Department of Public Health Laboratory discovered where an outbreak strain of Typhimurium, a serotype or a different kind of Salmonella, was coming from. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigators reported that the peanut processing plant, Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) in Blakely, Georgia, which produces peanut butter, peanut paste, and other peanut products was selling their products to many food companies which then was spread out and created the outbreak strain.
“As of yesterday we’ve had 575 persons from 43 states and one person from Canada who have been infected with this outbreak strain. Starting from September 1st of last year until January 21st of this year a total of 127 people have required hospitalization and the infection tragically contributed to the death of 8 persons.” said Ali S. Khan, Assistant Surgeon General and Deputy Director of the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-borne, and Enteric Diseases, at the Center for Disease Control.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) didn’t like hearing that PCA had been involved in past cases of Salmonella distribution. He said, “This kind of company should have been shut down immediately. A full sign of Salmonella, you go back and clean everything out. I’m even asking for criminal prosecutions for this. If they think well we get caught, maybe a recall, maybe we’ll get a fine as a cost of doing business well in this case its been people who have lost their lives. It’s certainly been an enormous cost to companies who may have totally safe products but they’ve had to recall it… I want to see some people go to jail!”
Because an investigation is timely Khan suggested what would help speed up the process. “We need new tools at the local, state and national level to investigate these outbreaks… We need new information tools… We need new ways to standardize, analyze bring information together in real time to so right away to understand what is going on…We need better investment at the state and local level to actually make these diagnosis quickly, do the testing very quickly, do the interviews quickly… and then hand that off to FDA so they can do their timely response.” he said.
According to the FDA website on January 30, 2009, the FDA confirmed that their Office of Criminal Investigations was involved in a Justice Department investigation of PCA. Consumers are urged to check FDA’s web site to determine which products have been recalled and those that will be recalled in the coming days.
