Both the House and Senate have now passed comprehensive health care reform bills. The House passed the “Affordable Health Care for America Act” (H.R. 3962) on November 7, 2009, while the Senate passed the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (H.R. 3590) on December 24, 2009. Since then, House and Senate Democratic leaders and the Obama administration have been working behind the scenes to attempt to reconcile the two bills and ready the legislation for final action.
In the wake of last week’s surprising election of Scott Brown (R-MA) in a special election in Massachusetts to fill the Senate seat left open by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), it now appears that the push for health care reform is on hold, at least for the time being. President Obama is scheduled to give his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on January 27, and it is likely that the speech will provide some direction on how the White House hopes to proceed on health care reform — and other priorities such as jobs legislation, financial regulatory reform and deficit reduction — for the remainder of the year.
Attached is a revised version of our side-by-side comparison of key provisions of the House and Senate-passed bills in the following areas:
Insurance Market Reforms
Employer Responsibility
Exchange
Public Plan Option
Individual Responsibility
Revenue Raisers
