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Senate Approves Landmark Health-Care Bill (The Washington Post)
The Senate passed a landmark health-care bill Thursday morning that would provide coverage to more 30 million people and begin a far-reaching overhaul of Medicare and the private insurance market.
Vice President Biden presided over the 60-39, party line vote.
Thursday’s vote — which came on the first Senate session on Dec. 24 in more than five decades — brings Democrats closer than ever to realizing their 70-year-old goal of universal health coverage.
For the first time, most Americans would be required to obtain health insurance, either through their employer or via new, government-regulated exchanges. Those who can’t afford insurance plans would receive federal subsidies. And Medicaid would be vastly expanded to reach millions of low-income children and adults.
Difficult issues must be still resolved in final negotiations with the House, which has passed more liberal health-care reform legislation, and those talks could stretch through January and perhaps into February, Democratic leaders said. But Democrats are increasingly confident that President Obama would sign a bill into law in early 2010.
“Health care reform is not a matter of ‘if,’ ” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday. “Health care reform now is a matter of ‘when.’ ”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared after Wednesday’s vote that: “We stand on the doorstep of history.” But he declined to speculate about negotiations with the House.
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