Obama healthcare plan passes Senate

• Source: Global Times
• [02:06 October 15 2009]
• Comments

By Zhang Wen

US President Barack Obama's healthcare-reform plan received a huge boost Wednesday as a key Senate committee approved sweeping legislation to enact the plan.

The Finance Committee voted 14-9 Wednesday in favor of legislation that would see health insurance extended to most of the 47 million Americans who are currently not covered.

"We are now closer than ever before to passing health reform. But we're not there yet," the agency quoted Obama as saying in a hastily prepared statement after the vote. "This bill is not perfect, and we have a lot of difficult work ahead of us. There are still significant details and disagreements to be worked out over the next several weeks."

Eventually, the Senate and House must pass the same bill – after reaching a compromise on a version if they first approve different measures, which seems likely.

However, the committee's version of the legislation has no option under which the public would be offered a state-run insurance plan. And that bill must be merged with the more liberal version passed by the health, education, labor and pensions committee, which includes the public plan, before it hits the Senate floor.

The three House committees and two Senate committees with jurisdiction over healthcare have now approved versions of the legislation, a goal that eluded then-president Bill Clinton's reform push in 1993.