Thursday, October 29, 2009
THE HOUSE AND SENATE HEALTH CARE BILLS
After a matter is investigated in Congressional Committees, eventually
(a) A bill comes to the floor of the House and another comes to the floor of the Senate.
(b) These bills may be amended.
(c) If they are passed in each house of Congress, a Committee consisting of members of both houses creates a single bill using elements of the two separate bills from the two houses.
(d) This final, single, "compromise" bill must then be passed by each house.
(e) After the bill is passed, it must be signed by the President, and then becomes law.
The current bills from the House of Representatives and the Senate are now being amended before coming to a vote in each house. (We are just at step (a)).
Here is the text of the two HEALTH CARE bills. They are very long and complex pieces of legislation:
HOUSE BILL as of October 29, 2009 (1018 pages)
http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
SENATE BILL as of July 15, 2009 (615 pages)
http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf
Labels: Congress, HEALTH CARE BILL, House of Representatives, Senate
