House passes health care bill, Senate to begin debate soon

From wire reports

WASHINGTON

In a victory for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed landmark health care legislation Saturday night to expand coverage to tens of millions who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry. Republican opposition was nearly unanimous.

The 220-215 vote cleared the way for the Senate to begin debate on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.

A triumphant Speaker Nancy Pelosi likened the legislation to the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later.

“It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans. It offers everyone, regardless of health or income, the peace of mind that comes from knowing they will have access to affordable health care when they need it,” said Rep. John Dingell, the 83-year-old Michigan lawmaker who has introduced national health insurance in every Congress since succeeding his father in 1955.

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Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana was the only Republican to vote in favor of the bill.

The House plan would cover an additional 36 million people by 2019, leaving 4 percent of the nation without coverage, compared with the estimated 17 percent who do not have insurance now, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans, who have fought Obama’s health care campaign for most of the year, charged Democrats with pushing the nation toward government-run health care and threatening to bankrupt the Treasury at a time when the deficit is skyrocketing.

“People have a grave concern about what Washington is doing to them, not for them,” Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, said Saturday.

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The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide federal subsidies to those who otherwise could not afford it. Large companies would have to offer coverage to their employees. Both consumers and companies would be slapped with penalties if they defied the government’s mandates.

Insurance industry practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions would be banned, and insurers would no longer be able to charge higher premiums on the basis of gender or medical history. In a further slap, the industry would lose its exemption from federal anti-trust restrictions on price gouging, bid rigging and market allocation.

At its core, the measure would create a federally regulated marketplace where consumers could shop for coverage. In the bill’s most controversial provision, the government would sell insurance, although the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that premiums for it would be more expensive than for policies sold by private firms.

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Obama asked Democrats to “answer the call of history” in a rare weekend appearance on Capitol Hill as part of an all-out effort to rally Democrats to support the biggest health care legislation since the creation of Medicare for the elderly in 1965.

The legislation – which includes more than $1 trillion of new health care spending over the next decade while reducing the deficit by an estimated $106 billion – will have to be reconciled with a separate health care bill being developed by Democratic leaders in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is working to unite his members in time to hold a Senate vote before Christmas, a critical deadline if Democrats are to send health care legislation to Obama’s desk by the end of January.

With the unemployment rate continuing to rise and polls showing the public increasingly jittery about Obama’s health care campaign, Democrats are racing to push through an overhaul before what many see as a historic opportunity slips away.

 U.S. Rep. Glenn Nye, D-2nd District, which includes Virginia Beach and part of Norfolk, announced earlier Saturday that although the legislation achieves many of his goals for health care reform, he planned to vote against the bill because it doesn’t reduce long-term health care costs.

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  The difficult issue of how much to restrict new federal spending on abortion continued to complicate the outcome by creating a split between Democrats supporters and opponents of abortion rights and loomed as one last obstacle. Unable to reach agreement on compromise language on abortion coverage, House leaders decided early Saturday to allow a vote on tight restrictions that would prohibit federal money from being used to pay for abortions, either through a new federal health insurance plan or under private plans that enroll people relying on federal subsidies.

“From Day 1, my goal has been to ensure federal tax dollars are not used to pay for abortions,” said Rep. Brad Ellsworth, Democrat of Indiana and one of the authors of the abortion provision.

The Stupak amendment passed late Saturday with a vote of 240-194, with one member voting “present.”

The concession eased a threat by some anti-abortion Democrats to oppose the bill but it infuriated supporters of abortion rights, who said they would support the larger bill and continue to fight for changes in the final legislation.

 “There’s no way at the end of the day we’re going to support these kinds of further restrictions on abortion,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said on C-SPAN.  

McClatchy Newspapers, The Associated Press and The New York Times contributed to this report.