Health care bill barely passes the U.S. House

November 8, 12:05 PMConsumer News ExaminerBroderick Perkins

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With the support of older consumers and medical professionals, a $1.2 trillion health care bill squeaked past during a rare Saturday session of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The overwhelming partisan 220-215 vote came from 219 Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Joseph Cao, a first-term Republican who holds an overwhelmingly Democratic seat in New Orleans. The tally revealed 176 Republicans and 39 Democrats voted against the measure.

A two-thirds vote of 218 was necessary to move the nearly 2,000-page measure onto the U.S. Senate.

The measure would create a federally regulated marketplace where consumers could shop for coverage. It is designed to expand coverage to 36 million uninsured Americans. That would result in 96 percent of the nation's eligible population having health insurance.

The legislation mandates that all Americans carry insurance. It would provide federal subsidies for coverage for those who could not afford it. Large corporations would have to offer coverage for their employees. Consumers and companies alike would be penalized for not carrying coverage.

The legislation would also outlaw certain insurance industry practices, including denying coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions and charging higher premiums based on gender or medical history.

The legislation also removes insurance industry exemption from federal antitrust restrictions on price gouging, bid rigging and market allocation.

To pay for health care reform, the new law would cut Medicare's projected spending by more than $400 billion over a decade. It would also impose a tax surcharge of 5.4 percent on personal individual incomes of over $500,000, $1 million for couples.Earlier this week, the 40-million-member AARP, which has campaigned to dispel myths about health care reform, as well as the American Medication Association and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network threw their support behind the measure.

Others supporters are organized under the Health Care For America Now and President Barack Obama's Organizing For America campaigns.

Calling the bill social medicine and a drain on the budget, the bill's opponents are organized under the The Republican National Committee and Conservatives for Patients' Rights.

The Center for Responsive Politics reported opponents of health reform bill received 15 percent more health industry contributions than supporters.