The Facts:

The House passed the Senate health reform bill late Sunday evening in what many Democrats are calling a monumental social paradigm shift.

Our Opinion:

Health care reform was certainly necessary, but the final push didn’t seem to honor the legislative process. At the very least, students should take the time to understand the legislation and the affects it will inevitably bring them now and into the future.

After a year of debate and discussion on health care reform, the House finally passed the Senate version of the controversial reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, in a narrow vote of 220 – 211 late Sunday night.

In the immediate short term, many students will not see the affects of the measure and, in fact, most of the bill’s major changes, which will likely pass the Senate during the Reconciliation process, don’t take effect until 2014 or later.

Health care reform has been a long time in coming and both sides of the aisle certainly acknowledge the need for changes to the one-sixth of federal expenditure that is tied up in health care. But many people — and rightfully so — oppose the way the final push was handled.

The Reconciliation process was developed as a method to avoid filibusters on contentious budget bills. Its first uses outside that realm were quite literally envisioned as loop holes. This wasn’t the way to pass the sort of landmark change health care represents.

If this is the greatest public sector modification since Social Security, as many Democrats have asserted, it certainly shouldn’t be accomplished with a sort of parliamentary trick. Democrats who claim that the Republicans are the historic users of Reconciliation — 17 out of 23 prior usages — are not out of line, but using it themselves is certainly more Hammurabi and less senatorial.

The larger issue, though, is what it all means for students. Once again, despite all the uproar, most probably won’t experience massive changes. However, one that might benefit students graduating soon — especially those facing unemployment — is the change which will allow parents to keep their children on their plans until age 26.

But for the most part the new changes will benefit the financially struggling, those who have been previously denied for pre-existing conditions and people in high-risk categories.

The bill would also substantially alter the penalties for businesses which do not provide coverage and expand coverage opportunities — through provider exchanges — to Americans without coverage.

There are merits to the legislation and there are certainly areas which will require “change.” But students — and the populous in general — must take the time to understand the impact and identify what it will bring to students, even if it’s in 2014.