Sen. Tom Coburn has just demanded that the Senate clerk read the
single-payer amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders -- and it's
767 pages.
Typically, Senators offering amendments will ask for unanimous
consent to avoid reading the entire meausure, but all it takes is
one Senator to object to demand its reading, and Coburn objected
to Sanders attempt to dispense with the reading of the amendment.
To give you a sense of how this could delay things, it took the
Senate clerk 18 minutes to get through the first 6 pages of the
amendment, which were the table of contents. At this current
pace, it will take 38 hours to get through the entire amendment.
You can follow along with the amendment
here.
UPDATE: The body of the bill seems to be going faster than the
table of contents, but it still looks likely to take at least 12
hours at this pace.