The bill squeaked through with the minimum 60 votes needed for cloture, coming from all 58 Senate Democrats and two independents in the wee hours of Monday morning.
The last Democrat holdout, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), announced his support on Saturday, saying the bill would be a legislative landmark comparable with the Social Security and Civil Rights acts of last century.
Not one Republican, however, voted for the bill, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stated: “This massive piece of legislation that seeks to restructure one-sixth of our economy is being written behind closed doors without input from anyone in an effort to jam it past not only the Senate but the American people before Christmas.”
If the Senate bill is approved in the third cloture vote on Christmas Eve, House and Senate leaders would then have to reconcile the bill with the version the House passed last month, which has many differences with the Senate version.
Differences include the House’s public option, which the Senate does not have, and different dates on when a proposed ban on new physician-owned hospitals would begin.
The Obama administration hopes that reconciliation of the Senate and House versions would be completed by January or February.
Other provisions of the Senate bill would:
- Extend coverage to more than 30 million Americans who lack coverage;
- Ban insurance industry practices such as denial of insurance based on pre-existing medical conditions;
- Create a new insurance exchange where consumers could choose affordable coverage complying with new federal guidelines;
- Set up privately owned, nonprofit nationwide plans overseen by the same federal agency office that supervises plans for government workers; and
- Provide extra federal payments for Medicaid programs in selected states, including $45 million for Sen. Nelson’s state of Nebraska.
Read the New York Times’ report on health reform.
