The issue has gone to a joint conference committee, but its fate remains in doubt, as the two houses still have major differences in their treatment of drug benefits, patient co-payments, hospital payments, states' own drug subsidy programs, competition between Medicare and private health plans and many other issues.
Unwired A dogfight no one can win As important as Darwin Correction: America's sex laws Reprints Related items Boeing and Airbus argue about subsidies: Trading blowsAug 13th 2009Boeing is right to argue that all subsidies distort competition.
Reform, if it happens, will rest on four main pillars: regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition.
The United States and an 18-country group of agriculture exporters argue that European export subsidies hinder competition and drive up consumer prices.
During a visit to Mr. Wen's home city, Tianjin, outside Beijing, she made it clear that Chinese companies needed to recognize that subsidies distorted competition and violated European law.
Lauding the president's healthcare plan for its structure of "regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote in July 2009 that the administration's fate hung in the balance: "Knock away any of the four main pillars of reform, and the whole thing will collapse -- and probably take the Obama presidency down with it".
Sugar beet production depends heavily on government subsidy because of competition from imported cane sugar.
For farmers facing falling subsidies and foreign competition, mazes offer a route into agro-tourism.
Now, at one end gleams the new Guggenheim museum, a worldwide success, virtually bought with huge subsidies, against stiff competition.
But where it takes place, such populism will be a problem if it undermines the core EU principle banning subsidies that distort competition within Europe.
