Week ahead: Abortion bill heads to House floor

{mosads}For lawmakers, the rest of the week will be divided between healthcare prices, Medicare and cancer issues.

One closely watched development will be the rollout of Enroll America’s Get Covered America campaign, which will urge the uninsured to take advantage of ObamaCare’s new coverage options. 

Enroll America has been a source of controversy since it was revealed that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has assisted with the group’s fundraising. The nonprofit group was created by ardent supporters of the Affordable Care Act and has close ties to the administration.

The Senate Finance Committee will meet Tuesday to consider the state of healthcare costs in the United States, particularly why patients rarely know what they are. Witnesses will include Steven Brill, a contributing editor at Time magazine who wrote an influential piece on the issue, and several other experts.

Also Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations subcommittee governing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will hold a business meeting to mark up a 2014 appropriations bill for Agriculture and the FDA.

On the other side of the Hill, the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will look at the BioWatch program, which is designed to provide warnings about potential biological attacks. Republicans are worried that the costly program is ineffective.

The House Ways and Means subcommittee on Human Resources will look on Tuesday at the welfare system and how it helps and fails poor families.

Tuesday will also be a big day for cancer patients and advocates as they gather to lobby congressional offices. Hundreds of people organized by the Alliance for Childhood Cancer and the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network will urge lawmakers to protect funding for cancer research and to stop the sequester’s cuts to the National Institutes of Health.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging will hold a hearing Wednesday on the Older Americans Act, first authorized in 1965. The event will focus on how the law helps reduce poverty and hunger among seniors.

On the same day, the House Oversight Committee will look at the federal government’s approaches to issuing biometric IDs.

The week’s final big event will take place on Thursday as the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Health looks at the 2013 Medicare trustees report. The panel will debate Medicare’s financial status and how to strengthen it.

Off Capitol Hill, the Cato Institute on Monday will hold a policy forum on Halbig v. Sebelius, a case ObamaCare’s opponents believe could stop federal officials from issuing tax credits through the federally facilitated exchanges.