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Almost 100 years after Theodore Roosevelt called for universal health care for all Americans, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of the reform bill.

While the vote is historic, all eyes now turn to the Senate which has still to schedule a vote on their version of the bill.

Here's President Obama before the vote, as well as a clip of the historic moment when the bill passed:

The Washington Post reports:

After months of acrimonious partisanship, Democrats closed ranks on a 220-215 vote that included 39 defections, mostly from the party's conservative ranks. But the bill attracted a surprise Republican convert: Rep.  Anh "Joseph" Cao of Louisiana, who represents the Democratic-leaning district of New Orleans and had been the target of a last-minute White House lobbying campaign. GOP House leaders had predicted their members would unanimously oppose the bill.

Democrats have sought for decades to provide universal health care, but not since the 1965 passage of Medicare and Medicaid has a chamber of Congress approved such a vast expansion of coverage. Action now shifts to the Senate, which could spend the rest of the year debating its version of the health-care overhaul. Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to bring a measure to the floor before Thanksgiving, but legislation may not reach Obama's desk before the new year.

Politico reports that Nancy Pelosi is being credited with this victory:

Nancy Pelosi clapped her hands as she left the House floor late Saturday night.

“That was easy,” the speaker said with a smile.

It wasn’t. She had just delivered a promise decades of her predecessors failed to bring home, harnessing her uncommon focus, vote-counting acumen and consensus-building skills to bring tens of millions of Americans a giant leap closer to having health insurance coverage with a 220-215 roll call.

“Somebody asked me if this was a victory for [President] Barack Obama. It’s not. This victory belongs to her,” said House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.). “As far as I know she never sleeps nor eats.”

The bill’s fate, for now, rests across the Capitol in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). But with Saturday’s vote, Pelosi proved yet again she is the able master of a Democratic Caucus that is enjoying its greatest political and legislative success since at least the beginning of the Clinton administration and arguably since its legislative heyday in the mid-1960s.

Democrats, including Pelosi, view the push for expanding the government’s role in the health care system as a new plank in the social justice platform constructed with Civil Rights, Voting Rights, open housing and Medicare laws enacted during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, when Democrats held similar – and at times even larger — majorities in the House.

 David Gregory of NBC News gives an overview of the politics of the vote: