Obama praises senate health vote

Obama praises senate health vote

Barack Obama has made heathcare reform a key plank of his domestic agenda [AFP] A key vote on healthcare legislation in the US Senate is a "major victory for the American people", Barack Obama, the US president has said. The vote late on Monday night overcomes an important hurdle in a far-reaching overhaul of the US health system, which Obama has made a central part of his domestic agenda. The vote follows months of compromise and often bitter debate in the US congress over the multi-billion-dollar health bill. It all but ensures that the senate will approve a bill extending health care to 30 million uninsured Americans before Friday's Christmas holiday. But the final outcome remains unpredictable. Following a final vote in the senate scheduled for Thursday, the bill will still need to be reconciled with a more expansive version passed by the House of Representatives last month. On Monday, Obama sought to refute a key Republican argument against the legislation, saying his critics' frequent charge that the measure will inflate the ballooning US budget deficit and swell the country's debt "does not hold water". 'Tremendous difference' Speaking after the vote, Obama said: "By standing up to the special interests - who've prevented reform for decades and who are furiously lobbying against it now - the senate has moved us closer to reform that makes a tremendous difference for families, for seniors, for businesses, and for the country as a whole." But detractors have said the bill is not strong enough to overhaul the healthcare system after a public option to extend government-backed coverage without insurance was dropped. In video Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan reports on the unpredictable outcome of the health bill The senate bill states that most citizens should have health insurance and would provide for tens of millions of Americans to receive previously unattainable cover via subsidies. It would also reduce other barriers to gaining insurance, with those without work-based cover being given options to buy cover and help prevent people with pre-existing health conditions from being denied insurance. The measure also got the support of the influential American Medical Association (AMA), which represents the interests of nearly 250,000 doctors in the country. "America has the best health care in the world - if you can get it - but for far too many people, access to care is out of reach," said Cecil Wilson, the organisation's president-elect. Three main sticking points - a government-run insurance option, language related to restrictions on federal funds for abortion, and different tax approaches to raise revenue for the changes - are likely to dominate negotiations on reconciling the two versions of the proposed health plan. 'Public' insurance The senate bill will no longer include the "public" insurance option that was in the House version, dropped to appease moderate Democratic opponents. Both the senate and House bills include compromise language designed to ensure federal funds are not used to pay for coverage of abortions. Ben Nelson, a Democrat senator, said he will reject a merged bill that changes his abortion language. The senate plan, negotiated by Nelson, would allow states to opt out of including plans with abortion coverage on the exchange and require anyone with abortion coverage to write two separate premium checks. Despite being low-key the topic of tax revenues is expected to be the thorniest of the three, with both the House and Senate taking different approaches to help raise the money to pay for the bill. The House bill has a tax on the wealthiest Americans while the senate taxes expensive insurance plans, with both raising major objections in each chamber. A few other issues that need to be ironed out include the different penalties for individuals who fail to get coverage and a requirement for big and small employers to provide workers with health insurance cover. Detractors A handful of House and senate Democrats have said they will oppose the combined bill if it drastically changes the language of the original legislation. "The House of Representatives will have to basically back down on virtually everything they passed for this to become law," said Mitch McConnell, the Republican senate minority leader. Harry Reid, centre, was optimistic about the passing of a combined bill later week [EPA] "It will be interesting to see whether there's any institutional pride over there." Asked about the likely difficulty of agreeing on a final bill, Harry Reid, the Democratic senate majority leader, told reporters "we'll worry about the next steps at a later time". "Right now we're focused on what we're going to do this week," he said. "We're going to finish this bill before Christmas." Linda Douglass, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Health Reform, said there were members with "very strong feelings" about some of the provisions in the bill. "We're going to be going through a process where we're going to have to work through their issues," she said. Both chambers of congress will then have to vote on the merged bill again before it can finally be passed to Obama for signing into law. The legislation would see the biggest changes in the US healthcare system since the Medicare programme for elderly people was installed in the 1960s.

Source: Agencies