Who's Who Extra

...She will be gloved and gowned by Medicare expert Michael Hash and fellow Medicaid expert Andrea Schneider...

...Abortion opponents, not surprisingly, have vowed to fight coverage to the bitter end, arguing that most Americans do not want their tax dollars to pay to end pregnancies...

...He is the staff director of the committee's health subcommittee, chaired by Pete Stark, the first to declare Clinton's critical health alliances (purchasing cooperatives of individuals and businesses that the president argues are essential for cost control) dead on arrival...

...O'Donnell's counterpart on the Republican side is Senator Bob Dole's savvy chief of staff, Sheila Burke...

...When the majority leader floated three new variations on the employer mandate at the Senate Democrats' Colonial Williamsburg retreat in late spring, Hilley was the one who had put the pitch together...

...They are also the brains behind female members' efforts to include adequate mammogram coverage in the benefits package...

...A former economist at the Social Security Administration's Office of Research and Statistics, Podoff knows his health care policy, and he knows his numbers, an essential job in a game where the White House, the Congressional Budget Office, and Congress are batting around different figures...

...The Rules Committee, chaired by Joe Moakley of Massachusetts, is a powerful insiders' group that's essentially a tool of the Democratic leadership...

...While O'Donnell and Burke focus on the 20 Finance Committee members, George Mitchell's chief of staff, John Hilley, has all 100 senators in his sights...

...If a bipartisan bill is drafted this summer in the Finance Committee, it will have Burke's handwriting all over it...

...An example: Speaking at a meeting of other senators' staffers about Clinton's economic package in 1993, which Moynihan wanted passed, O'Donnell said that if the bill passes, "you will find out what it is to have a chairman who is your best friend for eight years...

...Leading the influential women's charge for abortion coverage is 27-year-old Heather Howard, a legislative assistant for Representative Nita Lowey of New York...

...On the ground, his job now will be to blend the bills that will probably come out of Finance and Labor and Human Resources—a blend that, hopefully, will navigate its way around a Republican filibuster...

...David Aber-nethy, a longtime health policy expert, looms behind Sam Gibbons and (the now indicted) Dan Rostenkowski on Ways and Means...

...M itchell says he gave up the Supreme Court in order to pass a health care bill, and now it is up to Hilley to take pulses...

...Dole—who sits on the Finance Committee—and Moynihan look to Burke for her in-depth knowledge of the subject...

...O'Donnell and his boss, Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan, are insisting on passing a bipartisan bill in committee, and to O'Donnell falls the job of corralling senators from both parties...

...She knows who will vote for which bill, and how to get their votes...

...By his side daily is his communications director, Laura Quinn, who is thought to be—next to Rockefeller—the Hill's most knowledgeable expert on the Clinton bill...

...Donald Shriber, counsel to the Energy and Commerce Committee, is Chairman John Dingell's right-hand man on health as Din-gell tries to find a way to finance reform without a national income or sales tax...

...On the House side, a few key staffers will nudge the bills through committee...

...Finally, George Crawford, the staff director of the Rules Committee, will help implement King's compromise legislation by determining which amendments will be attached to all of the health care bills before they reach the House floor for a vote...

...If it fails, however, "you'll find out what it's like to have his undying bitterness...

...Clara Bingham Clara Bingham is writing a book on women in Congress for Times Books...

...A former nurse and one of the few Hill staffers who gained her health care policy expertise in the field, Burke is the one who will make good on Dole's reluctant promise to participate in health care reform...

...For single-payer fans, the woman to cheer is Ellen Shaffer, a legislative assistant for Senator The congressional staffers who are calling the shots on health care Paul Wellstone, who helped write the single-payer bill and is considered the Senate's premier mental health expert...

...So as Congress tackles health care, a new crew of policy wonks comes out of obscurity and into power...

...Nelson, who has worked on health care policy since the 1970s, prepped for the battle for national health reform by becoming the number one Washington expert on Medicaid...

...Also an unseen but longtime power on Energy and Commerce: Karen Nelson, the Health and Environment subcommittee staff director, laboring under the aegis of Chairman Henry Waxman...

...If the tide ever turns in favor of a Canadian-style system, Shaffer will be at the forefront...

...Leslie Primmer and Susan Wood, senior staff members for the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, are also deeply involved in the emotionally charged minutiae of abortion politics...

...Which means that Andrea "Andie" King, Gephardt's health care guru, is one of the most important staff members in Congress...

...When the Ways and Means, Education and Labor, and Energy and Commerce committees pass their different bills, King will be responsible for stitching together a compromise the Democratic leadership can support and try to pass...

...Hill staffers are one of the invisible forces of Washington: They know the world about Congress, but no one in the world knows them...

...He will make sure the Rules Committee protects the chief Democratic bill from damaging amendments...

...Here's a roster of this season's hottest Hill staffers, who—because of their expertise—can often be more powerful than their bosses...

...Now, she's slugging it out, along with other single-payer advocates, to make sure the Clintons and those to their right don't break their promise to pass real universal coverage...

...Yet they are the gatekeepers and the deal-makers for the bulk of the detailed health legislation—the largest domestic retooling since the Great Society...

...He relishes playing political hardball...

...Shriber, who has a public health degree, is the staffer Dingell most counts on to calculate both the real and the political costs of the mandates...

...On the Senate side, the rubber meets the road in the Finance Committee, where Democrats hold a narrow 11 to 9 advantage...

...King is an important liaison between the different factions in the Democratic Party who want their say, from Jim McDer-mott's 90 single-payer votes to Jim Cooper's managed competition crowd...

...Abortion is likely to be one of health care reform's biggest headaches...

...As bills go through committees, liberal members are waging a behind-the-scenes fight for the inclusion of abortion coverage in the benefits package...

...She successfully juggles the conflicting wishes of the pro-choice interest groups and pro-choice members of Congress...

...While O'Donnell is the enforcer, the committee's chief economist, David Podoff, works on the details...

...No knee-jerk partisan, Burke has worked for Dole since 1979 and is considered much more liberal than her boss...

...Crawford, who has worked on the committee for 12 years, knows legislative maneuvers like a third-base coach knows bunt signals...

...Tough and unapologeti-cally Boston Irish, O'Donnell stands out from the colorless crowd on the Hill (he prides himself on riding his Harley Davidson to the office...

...She has been called "health care reform's other woman" because her influence almost matches Hillary Rodham Clinton's...

...This would mean complicated employer mandates and exemptions for small businesses...

...Lowey is the women's caucus pro-choice task force chair, and Howard is Lowey's chief pro-choice strategist...

...There, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr., the committee's chief of staff, rules the health care debate and is regarded as the Great Satan by the Clintons and those to their left...

...He knows more about the needs, wants, and political inclinations of all 100 senators than any other staffer, and Hilley is Mitchell's most reliable idea person...

...Speaker Tom Foley has designated Majority Leader Dick Gephardt as the Democratic leadership's point man on health care...

...Quinn is a shrewd operator with firsthand political and policy experience in virtually every corner of the Democratic party: She's worked for the Brookings Institution, Tom Bradley, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, and Joe Biden...

...Meanwhile, Senator Jay Rockefeller has emerged as the Clinton plan's most steadfast and enthusiastic backer, defending the Hillary/Maga-ziner program against all comers...