Congressional leaders met with the White House for hours on January 15 to negotiate over the healthcare bill, including how to pay for a deal giving a five-year reprieve on a new tax on expensive health plans to as many as 12 million union members, the Wall Street Journal reports. The agreement cleared away a significant hurdle to reaching a final deal on a healthcare overhaul, but unions estimated that softening the tax would reduce revenue by $60 billion over a decade.
