Health care bill passes House

In a 219 to 212 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the much-debated healthcare reform legislation Sunday night. The bill will now go to President Barack Obama’s desk.

Penn students expressed various reactions to the legislation, intended to provide healthcare coverage to 32 million more Americans.

“I honestly think that this bill is one of the most significant changes in social policy that we’ve had since FDR,” Penn Democrats President Emma Ellman-Golan said.

College junior Kingdar Prussien currently interns for Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) in Washington, D.C., focusing on healthcare legislation as part of Penn’s Washington Semester Program. Prussien was “very happy” with the vote, adding that it would change the role of health care in the political realm.

He said the topic “has been beaten to death,” and now more attention will be focused on immigration and other issues, contributing to a “new political atmosphere.”

According to College Republicans President and Wharton senior Peter Devine, the bill was passed in “a hostile political environment,” which he believes will be “detrimental.”

This “hot-button issue,” Devine noted, will likely be a debate topic between his organization and Penn Dems in a spring semester debate.

Rather than discussing the legislation itself, however, “how the legislation was passed … will be the more pressing issue,” Devine said.

Ellman-Golan pointed out that as part of the legislation, students would be allowed to remain under their parents’ health-insurance plans until their 27th birthdays, which she finds “fantastic … given the economy that most of us are going to be graduating into.”

“It’s music to my ears,” Wharton freshman Troy Daly said. “I don’t want to have to go out and get a health-insurance plan going out of college.”

While some students believe this to be the end of the long-disputed issue, others think there is still more work to be done.

“I’m afraid that this bill will make it seem like we’ve addressed the issue of health care and inequalities when I don’t think we really have,” Nursing freshman Lisa Doi said.

Comments (4)

The democrats are going against the constitution but doing what there doing. I am so sick of this, , or rather the Slaughter rule, is an obvious sign that our system of government is almost irretrievably broken. No matter how hard they work to grease the palms of lobbyists, the health care bill has such little backing that they're going to resort to shallow trickery. I understand that it's important, but perhaps this is something that should go to referendum. Yes, health care needs reform, but it's demonstrated again and again that if free competition is allowed to work.

Passing a law that says everyone will have health care does not create the money to pay for it. We can see the results of this politically inconvenient fact in other countries around the world which have universal health care. They don't have more doctors to treat the additional patient load since the money available is the same or less than before, so people have to wait longer to be treated by a doctor and sometimes die waiting. In fact there are fewer doctors because there is less pay because the government mandates lower compensation for doctors since it is in debt. Why is it in debt? Because it doesn't have the money to pay for all the wonderful entitlements it passes into law. What is the result of constant borrowing money that it doesn't have? Inflation of currency followed by a crash. That is what is in store for us. At some point the Chinese will stop lending us money. We are already printing money and the dollar is 80% of the value it was when Obama took office. Notice how everything is becoming more expensive?

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Health care is such a controversial issue. Who would you go against what everyone in America, practically, wanted? The people who wanted health care reform were in the majority, but it was passed anyway. Sorry to say, but apparently citizens have no voice anymore. Trinh Agent

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