Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer worked behind the scenes through December in the Senate to defeat a bipartisan initiative to curb suprise medical billing, according to a new report Friday which details the lobbying victories won by the for-profit healthcare industry in 2019.

"The success shows how formidable the health-care industry remains."

Reporting Friday by the Washington Post's Jeff Stein and Yasmeen Abutaleb points to Schumer, a New York Democrat, as a consequential figure in stopping the surprise billing measure from being included in an end-of-year spending bill.

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, effectively killed the bill last week by introducing a competing measure and pushing off the legislation until 2020.

According to the Post:

On Dec. 6, two days before a bipartisan group of lawmakers announced an agreement to their efforts, Schumer called a key player in the negotiations—Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate health committee—to express his disapproval of the measure, which negotiators had been crafting since the spring, according to three people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.