One of U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton’s staff members visited Albert Lea Wednesday with an update on the ongoing discussion about health care reform in the nation’s capital.

Regional Director Gary Wertish said Dayton has been working on assembling the Senate version of a health-care reform bill. The Democratic Senate wants the bill to have more extensive coverage for low-income households and senior citizens than the House version that already passed the floor, Wertish said.

Dayton, alongside his comrade Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., has also been trying to accommodate a provision to allow the sale of re-imported drugs, according to Wertish.

The Senate bill needs to be completed this week, before the session is adjourned until September.

To address the devastating flood damage on farmland in northern Minnesota, Dayton is reintroducing a disaster fund for crops. The provision was ruled out from the new farm bill being activated this year in the conference committee.

Wertish, being in charge of south-central and southeast Minnesota at Dayton’s St. Paul office, has been touring around the counties in the region to listen to local concerns and relaying them to the senator.