BILL PASSED IN SENATE

In an epic struggle settled at dawn, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed health care legislation Thursday, a triumph for President Barack Obama that clears the way for compromise talks with the House on a bill to reduce the ranks of the uninsured and rein in the insurance industry.

The vote was 60-39, strictly along party lines, one day after Democrats succeeded in crushing a filibuster by Republicans eager — yet unable — to inflict a year-end political defeat on the White House.

At the White House, Obama called the vote historic, and said because of it, “we are incredibly close to making health insurance reform a reality in this country. Our challenge now is to finish the job.”

Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, said they would, by early in the new year. Even before they held a celebratory news conference, Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement pledging, “We will soon produce a final bill that is founded on the core principles of health insurance reform: affordability for the middle class, security for our seniors, responsibility to our children by reducing the deficit, and accountability for the insurance industry.”

The House passed its bill in November, and officials said it was likely to be February before the two sides can sort out their differences over issues as diverse as government’s role in a remade health care system, coverage for abortion and federal subsidies for lower and middle-income families who would be required to purchase insurance.

Senate Republican attacked the bill to the end, and citing public opinion polls, said they would use it as an issue in the 2010 congressional elections. “This debate was supposed to produce a bill that reformed health care in America. Instead, we’re left with party-line votes in the middle of the night, a couple of sweetheart deals to get it over the finish line, and a public that’s outraged,” said the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The Senate vote unfolded as the sun rose over the Capitol on the day before Christmas, and marked the culmination of a battle that lasted months and included failed bipartisan negotiations, a last-minute flurry of Democratic dealmaking to lock in 60 votes and a highly partisan debate that held lawmakers in session a near-record 25 consecutive days.

Beginning in 2014, the Senate bill would establish insurance exchanges where consumers could shop for private coverage sold under federal guidelines. Most Americans would be required to purchase insurance or face penalties, and hundreds of billions of dollars in federal subsidies would be available to families up to incomes of about $88,000 a year. Insurance companies would be banned from denying benefits or charging higher fees on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. That provision would take effect in 2013 in the House version.

HOUSE BACKS BILL

The US House of Representatives has backed a healthcare bill in a step towards reforms promised by President Obama, despite strong opposition. Passed in a narrow 220-215 vote, the bill aims to extend coverage to 36 million more Americans and provide affordable healthcare to 96%.

The bill now has to be reconciled with a separate Senate draft law. President Obama has made reform of America’s healthcare system a central plank of his domestic agenda. Before Saturday’s vote, Mr Obama made a rare visit to Congress to try to persuade wavering members of his own Democratic Party to back the bill.

He said such opportunities came around “maybe once in a generation”. The bill would allow the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies and make insurers offer cover to those with pre-existing conditions.

But this so-called “public option” had been scaled back in the wrangling that preceded the House vote. The bill was supported by 219 Democrats and one Republican – Joseph Cao from New Orleans. Opposed were 176 Republicans and 39 Democrats. Before Saturday’s vote, Mr Obama made a rare visit to Congress to try to persuade wavering members of his own Democratic Party to back the bill.

He said such opportunities came around “maybe once in a generation”. The bill would allow the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies and make insurers offer cover to those with pre-existing conditions. But this so-called “public option” had been scaled back in the wrangling that preceded the House vote.

In the run-up to the vote, conservatives from both the Republican and Democratic parties joined forces to pass new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies to be offered to individuals and groups. The amendment had been offered to conservative Democrats as a means of persuading them to vote for the main bill.

A Senate debate on the bill the healthcare reform is expected in the coming days.

SEN. SNOWE (R) FAVORABLE

Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe broke with her party Tuesday and said she will vote for a Democratic health care bill, handing President Barack Obama a much-sought boost in his quest to expand access to medical coverage to all Americans.

Approval of the legislation by the Senate Finance Committee was a foregone conclusion going into Tuesday’s vote, since Democrats outnumber Republicans 13-10 on the panel. But Snowe’s decision gave the vote a significance that transcends partisan divisions. For months, congressional Republicans have been virtually unanimous in denouncing the Democratic bills as an unwarranted expansion of government influence.

The Maine senator kept virtually all of Washington guessing about how she would vote until she announced it late in the Senate Finance Committee debate Tuesday. She told her colleagues she has misgivings about the bill, but “when history calls, history calls.”

Democrats, aware that Snowe could be the only Republican in Congress to vote for their health care overhaul, have spent months addressing her concerns about making health care affordable and how to pay for it.
“Ours is a balanced plan that can pass the Senate,” declared Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. Health care legislation is expected to be on the Senate floor the week after next, said a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who must combine the Finance version with a more liberal proposal from the health committee.

The expected approval by Baucus’ committee would push a remake of the U.S. health care system closer to reality than it has been in decades. Four other congressional committees finished their work before August and for months all eyes have been on the Finance panel, the one whose moderate makeup most closely resembles the Senate as a whole.

The committee’s centrist legislation is also seen as the best building block for a compromise plan that could find favor on the Senate floor. But nearly unanimous opposition from Republicans means a tough battle lies ahead.

Baucus’ 10-year, $829-billion plan would, for the first time, require most Americans to purchase insurance and it also aims to hold down spiraling medical costs over the long term. Questions persist about whether it would truly provide access to affordable coverage, particularly for self employed people with solid middle class incomes.

A LONG WAITING LINE

Sen. Max Baucus on Wednesday brought out the much-awaited Finance Committee version of an American health-system remake — a landmark $856 billion, 10-year measure that starts a rough ride through Congress without visible Republican backing.

The bill by Baucus, Democratic chairman of the Senate panel, would make major changes to the nation’s $2.5 trillion health care system, including requiring most people to purchase insurance coverage or pay a fine and prohibiting insurance companies from charging more to people with more serious health problems.

The proposal, crafted by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, would cost $856 billion over 10 years and mandate insurance coverage for every American by 2013. It lacks a government-run public health insurance option favored by most Democrats and President Obama, but it contains provisions to meet other major goals for health care reform.

The House of Representatives is expected to pass a bill which will allow Americans who do not have employer-provided health insurance to choose a publicly-run insurance scheme. But Mr Baucus’s bill will not offer the so-called “public option”.

Instead, he would create not-for-profit co-ops, which would compete with private insurers to cover people without employer-sponsored coverage. Like other draft bills produced by various House committees and the Senate health committee, Mr Baucus’s bill would mandate all Americans to get insurance, and would provide subsidies to help less well-off Americans pay for their coverage.

But while the House committees proposed to pay for the increased coverage by placing a surtax on families earning over $350,000 a year, Mr Baucus would cover the costs of his proposals by levying new fees on more generous private insurance schemes.

Mr Baucus had hoped to attract Republican support for his plan, which is more moderate than the bills proposed by other committees. “This is a unique moment in history where we can finally reach an objective so many of us have sought for so long,” said Mr Baucus.

“The Finance Committee has carefully worked through the details of health care reform to ensure this package works for patients, for health care providers and for our economy.”

So far, however, his bill has not received any Republican backers. And one of the leading Democrats on the committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller, has rejected the plan, because it does not include a public option.

If the Finance Committee does eventually agree on a bill, the full senate will attempt to come up with a bill, based on the versions produced by the Finance Committee and the Health Committee.

IMPORTANCE OF BABY STEPS

President Barack Obama has said he intends “to get something done this year” on healthcare reform. In an interview for ABC News ahead of his key speech to Congress, he said he was open to new ideas and would not be “rigid or ideological”.

Mr Obama said the speech would offer “a lot of clarity about what I think is the best way to move forward”. Members of Congress are preparing to fight over the details of the reforms, as they return after the summer recess. The president is expected to speak about the politically divisive option of having a publicly run insurance scheme.

When asked if Americans will find out in his speech whether or not he is willing to sign a healthcare reform bill without a public scheme, he said: “Well, I think the country is going to know exactly what I think will solve our healthcare crisis.” Mr Obama said the speech will be directed at the American people, as well as members of Congress.

At stake for the president: getting Democratic factions on board with his plan and convincing Americans of the need for health care reform. “Wednesday night’s health care speech may be one of the toughest he has faced,” said David Gergen.

Obama, for the most part, has issued broad reform ideas, but he has left most of the specific legislative details to leaders in Congress, who have faced sometimes contentious negotiations.

GOP strategist Ed Rollins said that Obama must be “clear and very honest” with Americans on the specifics.

Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, added that Obama must speak to the uninsured on what he’ll support and show Americans how he’ll “help them find insurance and keep insurance.”

Some have even deemed it one of the key legislative speeches of his presidency to date.

TIME FOR ACTION

In a country of deep divisions and ideological extremes, impressions of Obama around here fall somewhere in the middle. Eight months into his presidency, he’s not the hero who will fix all the problems, nor is he the villain who caused them. Instead, he is seen as a bridge that leads toward the country’s next era — a guide into the new unknown.

He inherited two wars and a complicated recession and, while grappling with those, is trying to revamp the nation’s health care and energy policies as he tackles a slew of other ambitious agenda items.

Complicating matters is public that both wants him to stanch the bleeding but is also, as always, skittish about true change. And he’s is trying to do it all during a national transition that many fear could leave American dominance in doubt.

“He stepped into a time when there were probably the most problematic things going on,” says Dan Moschetta, a 22-year-old recent college graduate from this southwestern Pennsylvania city, 260 miles west of the Washington where Obama lives. “If he could get to all the issues, I’d say he was Superman.”

As Obama heads into an autumn filled with challenges as immense as the summer’s, public opinion suggests both opportunity and political peril. Polls show people in the U.S. are split over how he’s performing, and that’s echoed in the voices of more than three dozen people in this ailing but resilient corridor.

Here, three politically different states come together: Democratic-tilting Pennsylvania, GOP-leaning West Virginia and the perennial swing state of Ohio. Once the country’s economic engine, the area self-identifies strongly with hard work, family and patriotism.

It’s also a place that first felt the United States’ producing economy shift toward a consumer economy when steel mills, glass factories and pottery barns that dotted the Ohio River shut down in the 1970s, victims of globalization’s birthing pangs. The way people around here feel is notable. This is a relatively conservative area that, at any other time, could reasonably be expected to reject a Democrat out of hand. And like elsewhere in America, patience is not natural in an instant-gratification society that tends to demand quick results from its leaders and to view politics in black and white.

Why the middle ground, then? Does it hint at a new flexibility? Or is it quintessential American optimism, tempered by the pragmatism of a country growing up? Are the nation’s problems subverting knee-jerk politics?

Or perhaps this is a reflection of Obama himself as he straddles issue after issue with a management style that’s both pragmatic and idealistic, but also leaves him open to criticism that he’s failing to lead.

Also perhaps this: Facing the possibility of American decline, people may simply be at a loss for what to do — and looking, as so often before, to their president to guide them.
“This is really a whole new chapter in the state of America, and there’s nothing we can do but keep doing what we’re doing and hope it gets better,” says Phil Axworthy, 58, a software developer taking a coffee break in Pittsburgh’s Market Square. “I’m scared,” says college sophomore Mary Lesniewski, 19, as she reads a book on the green at Franciscan University in Steubenville. Will the country turn around by the time she graduates? “With the help of God, maybe,” she says.

People here manage to be at once optimistic and pessimistic. They say the country eventually will persevere and rebound. But they also say they’re aren’t as confident that the next generation will have it better than they do or that the United States will be as powerful as, say, China.

When it comes to Obama, they are wary but not ready to abandon him. They like him personally but are not embracing his policies. Yes, he inherited a country in chaos, but the troubles, they say, may be too great for him alone to reverse.

EUNA LEE, LAURA LING PARDONED

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il issued a “special pardon” for two jailed American journalists and ordered their release at former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s request, North Korean media reported Wednesday. The move to free reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee reflected North Korea’s “humanitarian and peaceloving policy,” the Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch from Pyongyang early Wednesday.

It was unclear when Clinton and the women would leave the country. The report said the Clinton visit was taking place Tuesday and Wednesday.

Former US President Bill Clinton has met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during an unannounced visit to the country, state media have announced.

Mr Clinton went to Pyongyang to discuss the fate of jailed US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. He is the highest-profile American to visit since his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, in 2000.

Analysts say Mr Clinton may also try to ease the deadlock over the North’s nuclear ambitions. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that Mr Clinton had “courteously” conveyed a verbal message from US President Barack Obama, although the White House said that Mr Clinton had not carried a message from Mr Obama.

Clinton was in communist North Korea on a mission to secure the freedom of Americans Euna Lee and Laura Ling, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV media venture who were arrested along the Chinese-North Korean border in March and sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in “hostile acts.”

His landmark visit, which was not announced in advance by North Korea or the U.S., comes at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, foes during the Korean War of the 1950s, over the regime’s nuclear program.

North Korea in recent months has conducted a nuclear test and test-fired an array of ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, with Washington leading the push to punish Pyongyang for its defiance.

Clinton’s meeting with Kim would be the notoriously reclusive North Korean leader’s first with a prominent Western figure since Kim reportedly suffered a stroke a year ago, sparking questions about the future of the nation he controls with absolute authority.

Critics say that Mr Clinton’s trip will be exploited for maximum propaganda value by Pyongyang. However, although Bill Clinton’s arrival was covered by North Korea’s evening television news, it was not until after apparently more newsworthy items, such as the improving quality standards at a biscuit factory.

This is not the first time a senior US statesman has gone to North Korea to negotiate for the release of American citizens. In 1994, then-congressman Bill Richardson – now governor of New Mexico – helped negotiate the release of Bobby Hall, one of two pilots of a US army helicopter shot down after straying into North Korea.