House Passes Health Care Bill

At 11:00pm (EST) last night, the United States House of Representatives took a final vote on the health care reform bill. At 11:15pm, the vote ended and the bill had been approved by the narrowest of margins. The final vote was 220 - 215.

In the end, 219 Democrats and one Republican voted for the bill. The lone Republican was Joseph Cao (pictured) from the 2nd District of Louisiana. This is a pretty liberal district, and Cao needed to vote with the Democrats on this to have any chance of surviving in a re-election bid. His opponent in the last election was William Jefferson, who had already been arrested and charged with taking bribes. Cao probably wouldn't have been elected had he been facing an honest Democrat.

This was not a perfect bill, but it probably was as good a bill as possible under current circumstances. It does ban insurance companies from considering "pre-existing conditions", protects Medicare, stops insurance companies from dropping people when they get sick, and creates a health insurance exchange with public insurance as one of the options.

A total of 39 Democrats deserted their party and voted against health insurance for everyone. I personally hope every single one of them has an opponent in the 2010 Democratic primaries. The majority of Americans are in favor of health insurance reform, and these Democrats need to explain to their district's voters why they opposed that reform and voted for the big insurance companies to continue business as usual.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where I'm sure we'll hear a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Republicans. The Democrats need to forget any hope of bipartisanship, because they won't get any more Republican votes than they did in the House. They need to do whatever is necessary to get health care reform passed -- even if they have to do it as a reconciliation bill (that only requires 51 votes).

I want to thank the 219 Democrats (and one Republican) who voted to pass the health care reform bill. They did something wonderful for the American people. Now all Congressional Democrats need to get busy and finish the job.