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Associate Web Producer, CNBC.com
The health care reform that the House of Representatives approved late Saturday is bad for the US and will actually damage the health care system, Steve Forbes, CEO at Forbes, told CNBC Monday.
The bill approved by the House expands coverage to nearly all Americans and bars insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.
But the battle is now shifting to the Senate, where work on the health care reform has been stalled for weeks as Democratic leader Harry Reid searches for an approach that can win the 60 votes he needs to overcome Republican procedural hurdles.
The Senate version on the public option is different to that voted on by the House and eventually the two parliament houses will have to agree on one bill to be passed again and then sent to President Barack Obama to be signed.
"This is the worse piece of legislation to pass Congress … since the 1930s," Forbes told "Squawk Box."
"I think short-term they'll take losses next year, but more manifestly they're going to hurt the economy," he added.
If the bill is passed, it would bring the biggest changes in the $2.5 trillion health care system, which accounts for one-sixth of the economy, since the Medicare government health insurance program for the elderly was created in 1965.
But the reform as was proposed risks to kill innovation and is bad for businesses as it will raise costs, Forbes said.
In the next 10 years "we're going to have ballooning taxes," he added.
According to the House bill, exchanges where people could choose to purchase private insurance or a government-run option opposed by the insurance industry will be set up. The bill would also offer subsidies to help low-income Americans buy insurance.
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