The Health Care Fight is Not Over

Brian Darling / December 28, 2009

Although the left has been celebrating the passage of Obamacare in the Senate as further evidence that the President’s health care reform initiative is a done deal the health care reform fight is not over. The truth is that this bill can not yet be transmitted to the President until very different versions of Obamacare are reconciled. The House and Senate must agree on what to send to the President for his signature before this fight is over.

There are key differences between the House and Senate approaches to Obamacare as explained by Nina Owcharenko and Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D. in a paper published by the Heritage Foundation lists 6 key differences between the two bills. Procedurally, the House passed a version of Obamacare with a public option, an income surtax and with strong language forbidding the use of federal monies to fund abortion. The Senate chose not to take up the House bill and passed a version of Obamacare with no public option, taxes on expensive health care plans and with weak language forbidding the use of federal funds for abortion. Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have since blocked the appointment of conferees to reconcile the differing versions of Obamacare. The options liberals have to get the bill to the President’s desk are therefore limited. (more…)