Food Safety Bill Moves in Senate

After stalling in the Senate for more than a year, S. 510: The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, cleared a major hurdle last week when the motion to proceed on the bill passed by a 57-27 vote. Republican Senators Scott Brown (R-MA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and George Voinovich (R-OH) joined all of the present members of the Democratic caucus to vote in favor of the legislation. The Senate was originally scheduled to act on the bill early this week, but is unlikely to do so before the Thanksgiving recess. Last July, the House passed a version of the bill.

Reforming Healthcare Reform

Finding bipartisan action on Capitol Hill can be a difficult task, but a new proposal in the Senate may be the exception. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Scott Brown (R-MA) have put forward legislation that would let states to opt out of key elements of the healthcare reform legislation passed earlier in the year. To be eligible for a waiver, the requesting state would have to set up its own healthcare insurance system that would cover just as many people in the state as required under federal law; it would also need to assure that such plans would be affordable and comprehensive. Under the Affordable Care Act's provisions relating to state requirements, such actions would not be allowed until 2017. The Wyden-Brown legislation would allow states to apply for waivers three years earlier.

The bill's supporters believe that allowing states to opt out of key elements of the law while still having the federal government hold states to certain standards will allow for policy innovation. In addition, by allowing states to opt out while also requiring them to implement alternative plans, some of the Affordable Care Act's most controversial elements - chief among them the mandate for individual insurance - could be discarded and replaced with alternatives, allowing both critics and supporters of such measures to see what works best. Critics, however, contend that many individual states are too small to implement individual systems well.