All over bar (a lot of) shouting?
It was the first time for more than 100 years that the US Senate had voted on Christmas Eve. This is not the end, but it is the furthest such a bill on healthcare reform has ever got in the US. As President Obama has pointed out, it was Teddy Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Party which first campaigned on the issue in 1912.
The Republicans will continue to fight it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that when senators got home for the first time since Thanksgiving, they would "get an earful" because of the "widespread opposition to this monstrosity."
The tension was punctured a little when the man who has been driving this whole process, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, voted the wrong way. Laughter rippled through the chamber and he put his head in his hands before changing his vote. He has said that when it is over he is going home to Nevada to "watch my rabbits eat my cactus". The strain is beginning to show.
But it is not over yet. Now the Democratic members of the House of Representatives will have their say. This bill has to be merged with the one that they passed in early November.
The House bill includes the public option and a different way of paying for the changes. Some are making it clear that they think the Senate should be made to go back to the drawing board.
My feeling is that President Obama will make sure that doesn't happen. He wants a victory, and he wants this over.
I suspect that the compromises and deals that went into the making of the Senate bill are like some complex child's toy, where if you remove one element the whole thing collapses. So there will be some minor tinkering with the bill but the essential elements won't change.
This is merely a hunch. If left-wing Democrats really want to play hard ball, if they really feel that the bill is so awful that it is not worth having, then they could still bring the whole thing crashing to the ground. I suspect it is all over bar the shouting, but there will be an awful lot of shouting before we're done.
I’m Mark Mardell, the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s North America editor. These are my reflections on American politics, some thoughts on being a Brit living in the USA, and who knows what else? My 
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