Senate Passes Historic Health Bill on Christmas Eve
December 24th, 2009
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden…
The United States Senate passed a landmark health care reform bill in a rare Christmas Eve vote that could help define President Barack Obama’s legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for all Americans for the first time in the nation’s history.
The 60-39 vote on a cold winter morning in the nation’s Capitol capped months of arduous negotiations and 24 days of floor debate, according to the AP. Vice President Joe Biden presided as 58 Democrats and two independents voted “yes.” Republicans unanimously voted “no,” but the tally far exceeded the simple majority required for passage.
The Senate’s bill must still be merged with legislation passed by the House before Obama could sign a final bill in the new year. There are significant differences between the two measures, but Democrats say they’ve come too far now to fail. Both bills would extend health insurance to more than 30 million more Americans.
Vicki Kennedy, the widow of the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, who made health reform his life’s work, watched the vote from the gallery.
At a news conference a few moments later, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the vote “brings us one step closer to making Ted Kennedy’s dream a reality.”
“This morning isn’t the end of the process, it’s merely the beginning,” Reid said. “We’ll continue to build on this success to improve our health system even more. But that process cannot begin unless we start today … there may not be a next time.”
The legislation would ban the insurance industry from denying benefits or charging higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. For the first time, the government would require nearly every American to carry insurance, and subsidies would be provided to help low-income people to do so. Employers would be induced to cover their employees through a combination of tax credits and penalties.
The legislation costs nearly $1 trillion over 10 years and is paid for by a combination of taxes, fees and cuts to Medicare. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the bill will reduce deficits by $130 billion over the next 10 years, an estimate that assumes lawmakers carry through on hundreds of billions of dollars in planned cuts to insurance companies and doctors, hospitals and others who treat Medicare patients.
Negotiations between the House and Senate to reconcile differences between the two bills are expected to begin as soon as next week. The House bill has stricter limits on abortion than the Senate, and unlike the House, the Senate measure omits a government-run insurance option, which liberals favored to apply pressure on private insurers but Democratic moderates opposed as an unwarranted federal intrusion. Obama has signaled he will sign a bill even if it lacks that provision.
It was the Senate’s first Christmas Eve vote since 1895, when the matter at hand was a military affairs bill concerning employment of former Confederate officers, according to the Senate Historical Office.
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December 24th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Why on earth don’t they cut defense spending instead of medicare?
December 24th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Beats me. Guess they figure they’ve got to win the war in Afghanistan, fund the withdrawal from Iraq and cut the deficit…
December 24th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
This legislation, like all legislation that creates new entitlements, assumes the economy can generate enough tax revenue to subsidize the new program. Social Security and Medicare are already headed for deficits running in the trillions, and this legislation will likely add to it.
Like anyone not currently covered by health insurance, I like the idea of universal coverage for that reason. But minus other measures to trim pork spending (which will never happen as long as there is a professional, serve-for-decades Congress)and very strong economic growth, the revenue simply will not be there to finance universal coverage for the long haul and maybe even short term.
The other aspect of this, something no one in Washington has talked about it, is that this legislation merely changes the method of paying the current corporate medical provider system. It does nothing, for instance, to encourage use of holistic health care such as acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, naturopathy, etc. There is no “change in culture” encouraged by this legislation whatever.
I stop short of calling this “health care reform” because all that has been “reformed” is who pays the bills.
December 25th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Actually, the Congressional Budget Office says this does not add to the deficit. It is “reform,” because it gives the federal government regulatory authority over the health industry like never before, including making it federal law that no insurance company can deny benefits or charge more for “pre-existing conditions.”
It is not everything we want in the form of a single payer system, but it is a step in the right direction. I say let’s wait to see the final bill that emerges from the House-Senate conference committee before writing this one off. Even the conservative AP stories on this call it “near-universal coverage for all Americans,” so the final compromise must be better than what we have been hearing on TV for weeks.
December 25th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I will agree that it is “reform” in the sense of giving the federal government new regulatory oversight, but this in and of itself is no guarantee that the effects will be those intended. And I also agree that it is likely better than nothing, but I too am anxious to see what the final Senate-House compromise version looks like.
I would like universal coverage a whole lot better if it were done through creating consumer-owned health care cooperatives — a la rural electric and farmers’ cooperatives. These cooperatives could then make provisions for things their members want, such as alternative care, without having to run through the Washington maze to get approval.