{"id":583053,"date":"2010-05-28T11:29:44","date_gmt":"2010-05-28T15:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=85949"},"modified":"2010-05-28T11:29:44","modified_gmt":"2010-05-28T15:29:44","slug":"house-splits-extenders-bill-cuts-cobra-benefits-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/583053","title":{"rendered":"House Splits Extenders Bill, Cuts COBRA Benefits Out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>House Democratic leaders just started a series of procedural votes leading up to what they hope will be passage of sweeping legislation extending a number of expiring tax breaks and unemployment insurance benefits.<\/p>\n<p>To appease budget hawks in their own party, however, they&#8217;ve made a number of changes. Most significantly:<\/p>\n<p>1) They&#8217;ve cleaved the bill into two parts: one that includes the tax extensions and unemployment benefits provision, and one that would prevent Medicare doctors from receiving a steep pay cut at the end of this month.<span id=\"more-85949\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>2) The bill no longer extends COBRA health benefits, which help newly unemployed workers pay their health insurance premiums.<\/p>\n<p>3) And it no longer includes funding to help states cover Medicaid patients &#8212; funding the states see as vital to balance their budgets, as Medicaid rolls <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/68133\/dems-health-bills-keep-medicaid-funding-flaw-intact\" >have increased<\/a> through the recent economic downturn at the same time that revenues have dropped.<\/p>\n<p>If the two bills pass the House today, they will then move to the Senate, which, for all practical purposes, has already adjourned for a week-long Memorial Day vacation. That leaves the upper chamber to take up the House bills when Congress returns June 7. Meanwhile, a number of safety-net benefits &#8212; including unemployment benefits and COBRA health benefits &#8212; will expire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>House Democratic leaders just started a series of procedural votes leading up to what they hope will be passage of sweeping legislation extending a number of expiring tax breaks and unemployment insurance benefits. To appease budget hawks in their own party, however, they&#8217;ve made a number of changes. Most significantly: 1) They&#8217;ve cleaved the bill [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}