I don’t think that’s correct. You are right about the Senate gutting a House bill and completely replacing it with the ACA, that way they could say it “originated in the House,” but the House had to vote again...I remember them making a big deal out of getting one Republican vote to switch over.
The "Big Deal" was in getting three [supposedly] pro-life Roman Catholic Democrats to vote for the Bill, with the public [and lying] assurance of the President that it would not be used to fund abortions.
Sorta.
The House did do a vote, but it was a covering strategy using the “deemed to have been passed” strategy on the Senate Bill, with the House passing amendments that would never have any effect on the Senate bill provisions.
The Wall Street Journal has a piece today that critiques the Pelosi strategy, the “Slaughter Rule,†that is being considered to pass ObamaCare.
We’re not sure American schools teach civics any more, but once upon a time they taught that under the U.S. Constitution a bill had to pass both the House and Senate to become law. Until this week, that is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to merely “deem†that the House has passed the Senate health-care bill and then send it to President Obama to sign anyway. Under the “reconciliation†process that began yesterday afternoon, the House is supposed to approve the Senate’s Christmas Eve bill and then use “sidecar†amendments to fix the things it doesn’t like. Those amendments would then go to the Senate under rules that would let Democrats pass them while avoiding the ordinary 60-vote threshold for passing major legislation. This alone is an abuse of traditional Senate process.