The Senate passed the health care reform bill early this morning by a 60-39 vote. The vote, once again drawn on 100% party lines, is certainly the most important health care reform legislation in my lifetime.
The Senate Bill now needs to be reconciled with with the House Bill in conference committees. The final version may not be ready to be placed on President Obama’s desk until the end of January.
Hats off to Senator Reid who was able to help keep the Democratic vote together. Wrangling cats has to be an easier chore than that. This is Senator Reid’s tweet just after the Bill passed.
Eric De La Cruz Smiles Down
It’s befitting that Senator Reid of Nevada, as the Senate Majority Leader, has played such an important role in the Bill’s passage. Nevada is Eric De La Cruz’s home state and where his fight for proper health care began.
Eric De La Cruz was a young man who suffered from a heart condition and was in need of a heart transplant. His sister, Veronica De La Cruz, a former CNN anchor and reporter, helped ignite the fight to save his life using the popular microblogging service Twitter. I write about how I first joined the campaign in an earlier post.
Eric died on the 4th of July, 2009 while waiting for a heart transplant. Since that day, Veronica and all her friends, family, and the “Eric Twitter Army“, or ETA, have been pushing for affordable health care for all. The ETA uses the #ERIC and #ETA hashtags on Twitter.
Today is a big day for us.
Minutes after the Bill passed, Veronica tweeted:
A few minutes later, Tim Hedrich, a long-time ETA supporter tweeted:
For #ETA & #eric supporters, saw this message pop up inexplicably after Senate #hcr vote. ? http://twitpic.com/uyeko
This is the picture mentioned in the link, Eric is certainly smiling down on us:
