NU Online News Service

WASHINGTON--The Senate and House have approved a final reconciliation bill that completes that chamber's action on pending health care reform measures.

In the Senate it was approved 56-43 on a party line vote. Democrats had predicted that they would get 52 votes on the measure. The bill is H.R. 5872, the Reconciliation Act of 2010.

House final approval came on a 220 to 207 vote.

All but one Republican Senator voted "no," Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., did not vote. Democratic Senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, both of Arkansas, voted against it, as did Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

In a statement after the vote, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which drafted what he called a "substantial portion" of the bill that President Obama signed Tuesday, hailed the Senate action.

"This legislation improves affordability by increasing tax credits to help Americans pay for insurance premiums, closes the Medicare prescription drug doughnut hole and saves taxpayer dollars by attacking waste, fraud and abuse in the current health care system," he said.

Sen. Baucus described the reconciliation measure as "a set of common-sense improvements to the historic health care reform law; Americans have been fighting for health care reform for nearly a century and today, the wait is over."

But, officials of the Self-Insurance Institute of America voiced "disappointment" that the bill passed by Congress imposes new regulatory burdens on self-insured group heath plans.

"That said, we expect our members to adapt to the new regulatory environment and that self-insured employers will remain an important constituency within the health care marketplace," commented Michael Ferguson, chief operations officer of Self-Insurance Institute.

At the same time, Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee sought to ease concerns voiced by Republicans that the Internal Revenue Service would monitor Americans to ensure that they have health insurance.

At a hearing of the panel's Oversight Subcommittee, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testified that the IRS would not be auditing taxpayers to verify insurance; that would be done by the Department of Health and Human Services through insurance companies.

Insurers, said Shulman, "will provide standard forms to the IRS so they can, in turn, deliver about $500 billion in tax relief to help middle class families and small businesses pay for health insurance."

A House re-vote on the reconciliation measure was made necessary after the Senate parliamentarian ruled early today that two non-health care related provisions in the health care measure violated rules related to budget measures.

Democratic aides said the problematic provisions deal with safeguarding students from future cuts in their grants if Congress does not provide enough money for them.

The provisions violate budget rules because they do not produce savings, according to Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

He said the provisions are "minor," but since they were likely to be subject to procedural challenges on the floor, and ultimately struck from the legislation, they were removed from the bill.

Because both the House and Senate must vote on the same bill, H.R. 4872, the Reconciliation Act of 2010, that will require the House to vote again.