The long-anticipated Senate health reform bill (a bill blended from the two bills reported from the Finance Committee and Senate HELP Committees) has been filed. The bill number is HR 3589. You will find it posted on the National Rural Health Association website. NRHA is completing an analysis of the rural provisions in the bill as quickly as possible. (Upon a very quick read, however, it looks like the proposed legislation retained most of the important rural provisions that were contained in the original Senate HELP and Finance bills.) Preliminary discussions of the bill have begun on the Senate Floor--but there will be a few procedural hurdles that must be overcome before we get to the actual debate where amendments will be offered.
The bill has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) at $849 billion over ten years, or, within the target that the Democrats were shooting for. CBO indicates that the bill will actually reduce the deficit by $127 billion over ten years and $650 billion over the following ten years. The bill is also projected to insure 94% of the population.
