As expected, the Senate went ahead and passed the health reform bill on Christmas Eve. Republicans had pledged to offer resistance to the last, but the threat of a major Midwestern snow storm led to an agreement between the GOP leadership and Democrats to wrap up the vote on the morning of Dec. 24. The vote had been set for the evening.
The bill is the same one that Democrats forced past Republican filibuster attempts earlier this month. Like that earlier vote, no Republicans supported the bill.
President Obama was quick to praise the progress in the Senate, calling its version of the bill "the most important piece of social policy since the Social Security Act in the 1930s, and the most important reform of our health care system since Medicare passed in the 1960s."
What's next: The differences between the Senate bill and House bill must be reconciled in a conference committee, a process that will essentially merge two pieces of legislation. This is where you can expect meaningful changes to the contents, and more partisan wrangling over what the final bill should contain. Once there's a single, merged bill, the full Congress will vote on it.
This entire process could be over as early as Jan. 30, 2010, according to an industry lobbyist I spoke to. The lobbyist - who's actively lobbying lawmakers on behalf of physician groups - expects that a permanent fix to Medicare's physician payment formula will be addressed outside of health reform.
We'll have more on the prospects for a permanent pay fix in our Jan. 4, 2010 update to www.PartBNews.com and in the accompanying print issue of Part B News.