Courtesy Alternet:

Wielding the gavel used by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., to mark the passage of Medicare some 45 years ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made history Sunday night as she ushered in a new era in health care, lowering the gavel to signal the final passage of health-care reform legislation, which is now on its way to President Obama’s desk. The bill passed with only three votes to spare, 219-212, with 34 Democrats voting against the bill.

It took the first African-American president and the first woman Speaker of the House to do what generations of politicians had failed to do: create a federally regulated health-care reform program that extends health insurance coverage to the majority of Americans. Given the vitriol and epithets hurled at Democratic lawmakers by anti-health-reform protesters this weekend, it appeared that the faces of those who led the health-care reform effort had more to do with the ground-level opposition represented by the Tea Party protesters than the actual substance of the bill, which was obscured by false accusations of a “government take-over of the health system” — and worse.

“This is what change looks like,” Obama told reporters after the House vote. “This isn’t radical reform,” he said, “but it is major reform.”

While the bill doesn’t come close to fulfilling the promise of the sort of universal coverage favored by progressives, it will, according to the Congressional Budget Office, create access to health insurance to 32 million currently uninsured Americans. But the victory came at the expense of a further erosion of women’s reproductive rights, even as it proscribed discrimination against women in premium costs and gender-specific pre-existing conditions.

-Source.

*Related:  What’s in the Bill, Courtesy Reuters.