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Healthcare reform leaps first major hurdle. Senate Finance Committee votes to pass bill.
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AP Photo - Sen. Baucus (D-Mont.) shakes hands with Sen. Snowe (R-Me.)
The Senate Finance Committee voted Tuesday, by a 14-9 margin, to pass its health care reform bill. This was the first major hurdle for President Obama’s main domestic policy initiative - an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system.
“As a result of these efforts, we are now closer than ever before to passing health reform,” the President said.
Still, there are signs of possible political battles to come. All 13 Democrats on the panel voted for the bill, yet only one Republican crossed party lines.
“When history calls, history calls,” said Olympia Snowe, the Republican Senator from Maine, who went against her party leadership to give this bill a hint of the bipartisan support that President Obama has been hoping for.
The President praised Senator Snowe for her “political courage and seriousness of purpose ....”
Sen. Snowe is pictured shaking hands with Senator Max Baucus, Democrat from Montana, and chairman of the Senate Finance committee.
Under Sen. Baucus’ leadership the committee wrote a bill that attempted to strike a middle ground which would make health care reform a truly bipartisan effort.
The Bill would require all Americans to own health insurance or be subject to a penalty of up to $1,500 per family. The Senate bill does Not require employers to offer health coverage, as the House bill does. As a separate note, there is a bill being discussed in the House might require employers to offer health coverage to their workers or be subject to a penalty of up to 8% of payroll.
The Senate bill would create healthcare cooperatives in an attempt to offer coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, but would fall short of creating a publicly administered health insurance option, which was widely publicized and had the support of many liberals.
The bill would also subject insurance companies to tough new regulations. One provision would no longer allow insurance companies to reject individuals for coverage because of pre-existing health conditions.
As is consistent with the American political process, there were signs of disagreement from both sides of the aisle. Some Democrats on the panel would have liked to have had a more extensive bill that would offer coverage to even more Americans, and that would have included a public healthcare option.
Democratic Senator John Rockefeller showed some disappointment that the bill doesn’t go far enough. “Universal coverage has always been the goal of health reform, and leaving 16 million men, women and children uninsured is wrong to me, as the senator from West Virginia,” he said.
Rockefeller and other liberal Democrats on the committee overcame their objections and voted to support the bill.
Democrats didn’t have to go far to find a note of warning from the Republican side. Amid the handshakes, photo opps, and sound bites, the bills sole Republican supporter, Sen. Snowe, reminded other supporters just how far we might still be from passing a healthcare bill into Law.
“Is this bill all that I want? Far from it. Is it all that it could be? No,” Snowe said. She said that she supports the bill, but has reservations. And she shares Republican concerns about how the Democrats might change the bill now that it is out of the committee. “My vote today is my vote today, it doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow.”
“We’re not there yet, ” President Obama said. “Now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back. Now is the time to dig in even harder to get this done.”
"The bottom line here is we need a final bill, a merged bill, that gets 60 votes," Sen. Baucus said. "Our goal is to pass health care reform, not just talk about it."
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