Democrats Get 60th Vote to Pass Healthcare Reform in Senate
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After nearly a full year of partisan wrangling and internecine disputes between liberal and conservative Democrats, the sponsors of healthcare reform have reportedly secured their 60th vote in the Senate, the vote needed to break a filibuster, end debate and bring the bill to a vote for passage. Once the public option for low-cost healthcare and an expansion of Medicare were stripped from the bill, Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) signed on; progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) then threatened to withhold support, but agreed to support the measure once $10 billion were set aside for community health clinics, and now, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), the last holdout, has reportedly voiced his support for the reforms.
Sen. Nelson was the last holdout, raising a number of issues he wanted guarantees on before he would support the reform legislation. His main sticking point had been the question of abortion. Sen. Nelson had taken the view that no new federal legislation should allow for the provision of taxpayer funds to pay for abortion, and wanted guarantees that there would be no such funds in the healthcare reform bill. While the elimination of a public option for health insurance helped make that requirement easier to meet, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) spent several hours in private meetings with Sen. Nelson, during which the Nebraska senator says he received the assurances he needed to support passage of the bill.
As reported by the Christian Science Monitor:
That would appear to give Senate Democrats the 60 votes they need to end a Republican filibuster and, after weeks of negotiation, finally pass their version of healthcare reform. Reaching 60 votes on a bill of such complexity, Senator Nelson said, “is an accomplishment of historic proportion.”
In a Saturday morning press conference, he said he thought the Senate bill would be a landmark piece of legislation to compare with the creation of Social Security or the passage of the Civil Rights Act last century.
There have been rumors of all kinds circulating about the kind of giveaways that might have been offered to persuade Nelson to support the legislation, as well as rumors about threats to revoke funding for key federal projects in his state. No details of the negotiations have yet come out, but the full 2,0764-page bill has been released, and is in fact in the process of being read on the floor of the United States Senate, at the urging of Republican members.
Pres. Obama, for whom the legislation would be an historic political victory and a sign of subtle but evident leadership skills, going into the 2010 election cycle, said in his weekly address that the health reform legislation is like a bill of rights for patients, where one “can find on any page patient protections that dwarf any passed by Congress in at least a decade”.
Key to the reforms are the prohibition on any dropping of insurance coverage due to illness or any refusal to provide coverage due to “pre-existing conditions”. It is widely believed by economists that while these practices are engineered to help insurers maximize profits, engaging in such practices requires massive multi-million-dollar legal fees, all while providing no enhancement of market efficiencies, meanwhile degrading care and pushing up per-patient and per-treatment costs.
Other provisions that progressives and a majority of the public had favored, like the re-importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada, or a robust public option to compete with high-cost private plans, will not be part of the Senate’s reform proposal. This means negotiations in conference committee with the House of Representatives promise to be heated and fractious. The House bill includes a public option, and over 40 members have said they will not vote for any final legislation that does not include it.
Sen. Nelson has said he would withdraw his support if the bill emerging from conference committee contains any of the provisions whose removal has allowed him to support the reforms. Democratic leaders in both houses are now under pressure to pass a comprehensive reform bill, which is deficit-neutral and will reduce the deficit over time, and to take on specific sticking points in subsequent legislation, possibly as soon as next year.
In a press conference this morning, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), one of the key champions of comprehensive healthcare reform and universal coverage, referenced Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “four freedoms”: the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear. (Dodd emphasized “from” in the last two cases.) He touted the Senate proposal as a landmark achievement in the progressive quest to reform society to make it more just, more free, more prosperous.
Sen. Tom Harken (D-IA), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee formerly chaired by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, said of the bill “we’re not building a mansion here; we’re building a starter home”, adding that “This is not the end of healthcare reform, it’s the beginning”. Harken and other Democrats promised action early next year, after the reforms are passed, to push for some of the key programs progressive voters want to see.
UPDATE, 23:33: Pres. Obama said today, in a special press briefing held to comment on the Senate health bill and the Copenhagen Accord, achieved last night, that “After a nearly century-long struggle, we are on the cusp of making healthcare reform a reality”. The comment comes amid reports that Senate leaders will now be able to pass the legislation by Christmas. A vote to end debate is now scheduled for 1 am Monday morning.
And, one of the most biting criticisms of the legislation, regarding its cost, seems to have been answered, as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest analysis projecting that the Senate proposal would have the effect of cutting the federal budget deficit by $139 billion over ten years. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), assistant majority leader and one of Pres. Obama’s earliest supporters, declared in response that “This is the greatest deficit reduction bill in the history of the United States”.
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