At 11:09pm Eastern Time, the House of Representatives passed sweeping health care reform legislation with HB3962. The vote was 220- 215 , with 39 Democrats voting against Health Care reform. One republican voted for the bill. 176 Repubilcans opposed the bill.
The bill, over 2000 pages, includes a Public Option. An amendment passed tonight that banned Abortion coverage being included with any Public Option or private plan where federal subsidies are involved. Rep. Jan Schakowski argued vehemently for abortion funding , but was unsuccessful in getting that amendment killed.
President Obama mentioned today that 14,000 people are losing their health insurance every day. He did not mention that the reason that they are losing insurance is because the economy in contracting, and people are losing their employer based health care. Perhaps it would be wiser to cut taxes and stimilulate Job growth instead of adding taxing those that still have jobs. The bill will include appx. $400 billion in new taxes on the health care industry over the next 10 years. Those taxes start January 1, 2010. (in 54 days)
