Senate Finance Committee passes health care reform bill

The Senate Finance Committee voted 14 to 9 today in favor of the health care reform bill it has debated for the past two weeks.

Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) broke party lines to become the only Republican member to back the bill. Snowe said that her vote represents a continuation of work on the reform process and that she shared her colleagues’ trepidation about how the bill will be merged with that of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee and the outcomes of future House and Senate negotiations regarding health care reform.

She said it is essential that the Congressional Budget Office’s cost estimates of the bill remain intact as it is merged with the HELP committee bill, and that those estimates should be made available to the public before the merger of the bills is discussed.

Other Republicans argued that the bill failed to meet President Barack Obama’s promises for health care reform. They said that the bill would impose taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year, create seven new taxes, make cuts to Medicare and decrease choice. They also contended that the bill does not protect those under the Medicare Advantage Plan, would not allow all Americans to keep their current insurance plans and that the legislation failed to bend the curve for health care costs and that the true 10-year price tag of the bill was $1.8 trillion — not $829 billion.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that the bill continues a “march leftward.”

“I still hold out hope that the doorway to bipartisanship will be opened once again,” he said. “I hope at some point the White House and its leadership will want to correct the mistakes that they made by ending our collaborative bi-partisan work.”

Democrats noted that the bill was balanced and would cover 94% of eligible Americans. They also said that the measure would increase choice and reduce the deficit by $82 billion over 10 years.

Many supporters conceded that the legislation is not perfect and could have done more to increase affordability and choice. They also cited the lack of a public option in the bill as a concern. — by Gina Brockenbrough