House Health Care Vote Results: Latest News From Capitol Hill

With the stakes as high as any vote in recent memory, Democrats braced for the end game on health care reform Sunday, with an impasse over abortion funding unresolved, and with their total support still shy of the necessary 216 votes needed to win approval of the bill.

Democratic leaders announced Saturday that the House will hold a series of three votes on Sunday-- first a procedural one on the rules of the debate, then a vote on the Senate bill; and finally a vote on changes House Democrats have sought to the Senate health care bill.

Whether those three pieces of legislation can win passage remained unclear Saturday night as a small but crucially important faction of anti-abortion Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), continued to withhold their support for the final bill because of language drafted in the Senate that Stupak said amounts to taxpayer funding of abortion.

Although seven Democrats who voted against the bill last year have changed their votes, three yes votes from November have announced they will vote no this time. The Hill newspaper reported that of the 37 votes that Democrats could afford to lose from their majority and still gain passage of the bill on Sunday, 36 have announced that they will vote no or are leaning in that direction. Roughly 20 Democrats were still undecided about how they would vote as late as Saturday night.

The House will begin the final debate on the health care bill at 1 p.m. Sunday, with votes expected to begin about 6:00 p.m..