So with that background, here’s what happened to the health care act. The original bill was introduced in the House of Representatives on September 17, 2009, as H.R. 3590, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It was sponsored by Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY). The measure went to committee (Ways and Means, then chaired by Rep. Rengel) and then to the floor of the House where it was debated on October 7, 2009 and eventually passed with a vote of 243-173 ( you can see the roll call here).
The measure went to the Senate on October 8, 2009. The Senate didn’t like the House’s version of the bill and instead focused on its own version of the bill. The Senate passed its own version of the bill as an amendment to the House’s bill on December 24, 2009 with a vote of 60-39 ( you can see the roll call here).
But, as noted above, the two versions have to conform for the bill to be signed into law. So, both the House and the Senate went back to the drawing board. Procedurally, the order was important here: the House eventually agreed to the Senate’s amendments to its own bill – a key distinction – since the bill had to have originated in the House because of the revenue component. The House agreed to the Senate’s amendments to the House’s own bill on March 21, 2010 by a narrow vote of 219-212 ( you can see the roll call here).
The enrolled bill was sent to the President on March 22, 2010. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the bill, making in Public Law 111-148 ( you can read it here).
So there you go. Technically and procedurally, a House bill because it had to be… Substantively, a Senate bill. The result was a public law.
–http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2012/06/29/if-the-health-care-law-is-really-a-tax-law-is-it-doomed-on-procedure/
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