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Senate passes Health Care Reform bill

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - For the first time since 1895, Senators gathered to vote on Christmas Eve at 6:00 a.m. They voted to pass the Democratic Health Care Legislation HR3590 with a vote of 60 - 39.  Both Alabama Senators, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby, voted against the bill.

Dr. John Fanning of Huntsville has been speaking out against the Health Care reform since it was first introduced. He has traveled to Washington, D.C. three different times to protest the bill along with organizing local rallies.

Dr. Fanning thinks the passed bill is a travesty and it moves America closer to a bad system of providing health care.

"There are clauses in this that actually will punish primary care doctors for sending patients to specialists and there are clauses that will allow the government to come between the patient and physician," said Dr. Fanning. "It will affect every American in the United States."

The vote Thursday morning  pushed health care reform further than it has ever come before. The 871 billion dollar bill would extend medical insurance to 30 million Americans.

It requires nearly all Americans to buy insurance, and it forbids insurance companies from denying coverage based on patients' pre-existing conditions.

Health care reform still faces another hurdle before it becomes law. The bill passed by the Senate must still be merged with legislation passed by the house before President Obama could sign a final bill in the new year.

"Our challenge now is to finish the job. We can't doom another generation of Americans to soaring costs and eroding coverage and exploding deficits," said President Obama.

Dr. Fanning says the health care reform bill in its current form is a disaster and he plans to keep up his protests.

Alabama Senator Richard Shelby agrees. He released this statement:

"This legislation is an abomination in process and substance. Conceived behind closed doors and hastily rushed through the Senate in partisan fashion, it is nearly 3,000 pages of 'reform' the American people do not want or need, and have not been given time to examine.

It dramatically increases the federal government's role in our personal medical decision making. It contains weak and unacceptable protections for taxpayers who do not want their hard-earned money used to fund abortions. It raises taxes during a recession when one of every ten Americans is out of work. It drastically cuts Medicare for our seniors and, instead of applying these funds to make Medicare more solvent or reduce the federal deficit, it uses them to fund yet another new government entitlement. It requires Americans to purchase insurance and significantly penalizes those who do not. It raises the Medicaid burden on states when they cannot even afford the burden they already bear. In spite of what Democrat leaders tell us, it will also dramatically increase the federal deficit.

Simply stated, this legislation will spend huge amounts of money that we do not have to empower the federal government to ration, and therefore decrease the quality of, our nation's medical services. We had before us the opportunity to build upon the best health care system in the world. The Democrats' legislation does the opposite. This is a day our nation will long regret."

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