Olympia Snowe was the only Republican to vote yes on senate health care bill

The vote moves President Barack Obama’s goal of overhauling the nation’s health care system one step closer to reality.

The bill would require all Americans to own health insurance or pay a fine of up to $1,500 per family. It doesn’t require employers to offer health coverage – as the House version of the bill does – and would create health-care co-operatives for purchasing insurance, not the publicly run health insurance option many liberals hoped for.

Palin calls Obama health plan evil

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called President Barack Obama’s health plan “downright evil” Friday in her first online comments since leaving office, saying in a Facebook posting that he would create a “death panel” that would deny care to the neediest Americans.

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care,” the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

“Such a system is downright evil,” Palin wrote on her page, which has nearly 700,000 supporters. She encouraged her supporters to be engaged in the debate.

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Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and ranking member of the Finance Committee is urging Mr. Obama to support taxing employer health benefits to pay for reform, an idea which President Obama denounced Sen. John McCain for proposing during the presidential debates.

“It looks like he’s looking at doing similar to what McCain wanted to do, and I think for the benefit of making this bipartisan, presidential leadership in this area would be very good based upon the tune of the last campaign,” said Sen. Grassley.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd on the other hand while appearing Sen. Grassley on “Fox News Sunday” that he’s against taxing the benefits.

“I mean, the idea that you’re going to have people out there that are struggling to make ends meet today, they’re falling further and further behind with wages, people losing jobs, losing homes – to turn around and say, ‘You basically have no change in your health care plan, and by the way, we’re going to tax you now for those benefits’ – we can actually pay for this with proposals Mr. Obama has made”, he said.

Obama plans to pitch the AMA’s annual meeting in Chicago. President Obama is expected to walk through the case for health care reform, including how medicine is delivered and how efficiency could be improved, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.