Senate faces Christmas Eve vote on health care – Yahoo! News

Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 11:10 am

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats are poised to pass a landmark health care bill that could define President Barack Obama’s legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in the country’s history.
Ahead lie complex talks with the House to reach final legislation in the new year.
After 24 consecutive days of debate — the second-longest such stretch ever — the final vote on the Democrats’ 10-year, nearly $1 trillion bill is set for early Thursday, Christmas Eve morning. It will be the Senate’s first Christmas Eve vote since 1895, when the matter at hand was a military affairs bill concerning employment of former Confederate officers, according to the Senate Historical Office.
Democrats have demonstrated their hard-won unity by clearing three 60-vote procedural hurdles this week, the last one Wednesday afternoon, with all 58 Democrats and two independents holding together against unanimous GOP opposition.
The House passed its own measure in November. The Senate measure would extend coverage to an estimated 31 million who lack it, while banning the insurance industry from denying benefits or charging higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the bill will reduce deficits by $130 billion over the next 10 years, an estimate that assumes lawmakers carry through on hundreds of billions of dollars in planned cuts to insurance companies and doctors, hospitals and others who treat Medicare patients.
Unlike the House, the Senate measure omits a government-run insurance option, which liberals favored to apply pressure on private insurers but Democratic moderates opposed as an unwarranted federal intrusion.
“Would I like one of those options to be the public option? Outnumbered Senate Republicans stubbornly played out a losing hand. Republicans took to the floor to lambaste the bill as a budget-busting government takeover.

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