Healthcare Reform Bill

On Saturday the 7th, The House of Representatives voted on the newest version of the healthcare reform bill. This new bill known as H.R. 3962, or the Affordable Healthcare for America Act had to gain at least 218 votes to pass. The bill passed a little after 11 PM with a vote of 220-215.

The vote was predicted to go down to the wire because it was unknown how the conservative Democrats would vote. The final tally told that 219 democrats voted for the bill and 39 voted against it. This means that only one Republican voted for the bill, Representative Joe Cao of Louisiana.

With eight seconds left in the voting period, the democrats began a countdown to zero, at which point the bill would be passed. The bill was the culmination of many months and years of work, for not only this administration, but also the Clinton Administration. The final House version of the bill is 1018 pages long on size 11 font!

Although the bill states that its purpose is “to provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes,” some are skeptical of the bills efficiency in accomplishing these goals. The Republican National Committee released a press statement saying,

"Today with help from their liberal House allies, President Obama and Nancy Pelosi finally got what they have been creating behind closed doors these past months -- a government-run health care experiment that will increase families' health care costs, increase the deficit, increase taxes on small businesses and the middle class, and cut Medicare".

Healthcare reform has been one of the most highly debated issues in recent history and was also one of President Obama’s main points of interest during his 2008 campaign. With 45.7 million Americans lacking healthcare, President Obama called the issue a “moral obligation”, and has worked to persuade the House and Senate to pass the bill, and get more Americans health insurance as soon as possible. On the other side of the aisle, many Republicans and conservatives claim that subsidizing healthcare will decrease competition in the Healthcare Trade, decrease quality of healthcare, and create a larger government, which is the next step to socialism.

Although some claim that the 45.7 million Americans without healthcare are largely composed of illegal immigrants and generally lazy people, no official breakdown of the statistics has been released. This version of the bill retains the Public Option which means that the public will be able to choose among several levels of coverage with different costs. The bill also contains caps on co-pays, deductibles, as well as subsidies to help people pay for coverage if they can’t afford it.

Although the bill was passed in the House, it is still a sizeable distance from being a law. The bill still must be passed by the Senate, and then brought back to both the House and Senate, where any differences between the two bills will be reconciled. Only after passing these two steps can it be signed into law by President Obama. It is unknown how long it will be before the Senate takes a vote on the bill, but it is hoped that it will pass before the year is done.