Thursday’s vote — which comes on the first Senate session on Dec. 24 in more than five decades — will bring 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.
What ever this is it is not “reform”.
Elections have consequences. How’s that last one working for you?