Healthcare reform still has a way to go, and there are a lot of flaws even in the more liberal House legislation. But no matter which side you’re on, you have to admit the House vote in favor of healthcare reform is historic. Scott Fidel of Deutsche Bank comments:
While passage of the House bill was a milestone for HC reform, the real surprise was probably how close the vote ended up being; the Dems had almost no margin for error in the final vote. We saw two noteworthy political themes emerge from the vote. First, a number of “Blue Dog” Democrats ended up voting in favor of the bill, thus once again proving that while they advertise themselves to the public as independent “fiscal conservatives”, they typically end up voting along straight party lines. The second theme is that the abortion issue is emerging as one of the real potential areas of controversy in the reform process, along with the public plan. Indeed, Speaker Pelosi needed to make an important last minute concession around abortion to get the approval of certain pro-life Dems. We suspect we haven’t heard the last of the abortion issue as it relates to health reform.
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