As you know, the Senate passed its final bill on December 24th by 60 to 39 votes, just sufficient to overcome the Republican filibuster. Now the House and Senate leadership are working on a combined bill, designed to pass both houses of Congress, ideally in time for the President’s State of the Union Address at the end of January or beginning of February. But because there is even less “margin for error” in getting the final bill passed in the Senate, the final draft is more likely to reflect the Senate bill than the House one. There are several sources for comparing the final Senate and House bills. Here are two sources, one at a high level and the other with a lot of detail:

• Comparison in the Washington Post (note: you may find it easier to download the PDF file than tab through the comparison on the web page): (click here)
• Kaiser Family Foundation Comparison of just the Medicare provisions in the two bills (use the first link on the page): (click here)
• Kaiser Family Foundation Comparison (available as a very detailed PDF file, or you can check off only the provisions that you are interested in comparing and get a web page summary): (click here)

House and Senate Democrats in Congress agreed to use an approach (called “budget reconciliation”) to enable passing health care reform with a simple majority of the votes if necessary, instead of needing 60 votes to overcome a potential filibuster. The budget reconciliation process just requires adopting a budget bill and them reconciling components to satisfy its requirements using majority vote.

For more details, see these articles in the Washington Post and on UPI.com.

PA Senator Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic party on April 28, giving the Senate Democrats potentially 60 votes (assuming the still-contested Minnesota election is concluded with Democrat Al Franken as the winner, as is likely). But Specter is at best a very moderate Democrat and might only vote for a modest, market-oriented health care reform bill. Still, being a Democrat means he likely won’t stand in the way of legislation that has broad support from other Democrats.

For more insight on Specter’s impact by health care politics blogger Tim Foley, click here.