Bill and Hillary Clinton just might cry, though not publicly. The long-awaited health care bill has passed in the House with one lonely Republican supporting vote (technically making it bipartisan). Unfortunately, there are still a slew of issues left to overcome before health care reform finally becomes a reality, not the least of which is having the bill also pass in the Senate.

Ever since it’s been clear that this bill will not simply be a stillborn dream child of Obama’s administration, lobbyists and interest groups have scrambled in a free-for-all to stuff the bill with as many special-interest goodies as possible.

One company, Genentech, went as far as to draft up prewritten statements for congressmen and congresswomen on both sides of the aisle, made apparent by the sudden deluge of strikingly similar entries into the Congressional Record. But despite the symbolic significance of those statements, those were just words, not legislation.

More tangible stocking stuffers include promotion of in-country medical research, continued absence of a tax on costly “Cadillac” health insurance plans that provide preferential treatment, and most infamously, the Stupak Amendment—dubbed the “anti-abortion amendment” because it would limit private health insurance companies’ coverage of abortions.

And given the rhetoric thus far, it seems unlikely that these will be snipped out of the Senate’s version or the eventual final bill.

The issues surrounding the Stupak Amendment are illustrative of the high stakes in this entire health care debate. Although it is more significant than the other stocking stuffers, the Stupak Amendment still only has a limited scope.

Even if it is enacted into law, the Stupak Amendment doesn’t ban abortion, nor does it put any additional legal fetters on the procedure. Other than the symbolic significance, the only practices it does affect are the new proposals being put into place on top of our current system.

Yet this new system will also fundamentally change the overall health care environment—which was the primary purpose of the reform. With the Stupak Amendment, private insurers can still offer abortion in their health care plans, but without the aid of federal subsidies. Given the significance of these subsidies in conjunction with insurance mandates, there will be few private insurers who want to cater to this new customer base that can afford to have abortion as a covered procedure.

Even those who currently cover abortion will likely scrap it in order to compete with the public option and strive for those subsidies. With the Stupak Amendment, federal dollars will work as a contagion to force abortion out of much of the private insurance market.

This doesn’t mean that abortion will be uncovered for everyone. Private insurers will still offer coverage for abortion in corporate group plans. Wealthy individuals may opt to purchase premium plans without the federally imposed restrictions—and even if they don’t, they can always pay for the uncovered procedures themselves.

This is a luxury, however, that few can afford. With these systemic effects, the Stupak Amendment might actually do more social harm than simply impose extra restrictions on abortions—it not only makes abortions more difficult to obtain, but creates a class divide in access and affordability to the procedure.

The government’s involvement in the health insurance market will affect the private industry deeply with even the smallest actions—which ironically is the oft-touted Republican fear of “distruptive government intervention.”

America’s health care system is in desperate need of reform. But as the example of the Stupak Amendment demonstrates, legislators are now playing with fire. If the public isn’t vigilant in paying attention to what is being added to the health care soup, Americans may end up with a whole new generation of problems and shortcomings in their medical system.

Although almost any reform legislation is a step in the right direction, Democratic leadership—eager to simply pass something and nearly anything—should take special note to ensure that the final bill isn’t a Pyrrhic victory for both Democrats and Americans as a whole.