The Republican-led U.S. House voted
to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, an action
party leaders said was intended to demonstrate their resolve to
undo the president’s main domestic-policy achievement.
The bill, H.R. 6079, was passed on a vote of 244-185 today,
with five Democrats joining Republicans in voting for repeal.
The vote represents the 33rd time that House Republicans have
voted to revoke all or parts of the 2010 health care law, known
as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The measure
won’t advance in the U.S. Senate, where Democrats hold the
majority.
Unless Republicans win the presidency and gain the Senate
majority next session, their attempts to repeal the law will go
no further than the House.
The health-care law ”is making our economy worse,” House
Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said today before the
vote. “Americans want a step-by-step approach that protects the
access to care that they need, from the doctor they choose at a
lower cost.”
Boehner called today’s House vote another chance for Senate
lawmakers “to reconsider” their refusal to pass legislation to
rescind the law.
Democrats, who lost control of the House in 2010, provided
all of the votes to pass the health-care overhaul. The House
Democrats voting today to scrap the law were Dan Boren of
Oklahoma; Larry Kissell of North Carolina; Mike McIntyre of
North Carolina; Jim Matheson of Utah and Mike Ross of Arkansas.
Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 28 upheld the core of the
health care law. The justices, voting 5-4, said Congress can
require Americans to carry insurance or pay a penalty, which the
court said was within lawmakers’ constitutional power to tax.
Democrats, cheering the court’s decision, went on the
offensive with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California
Democrat, calling the repeal provision “useless” and a “bill
to nowhere.” Pelosi said the law makes health care “a right,
not a privilege for a few.”
Michigan Republican Dave Camp criticized the overhaul law,
saying “health care premiums are not going down as a result of
this law, they are going in the other direction.”
Camp, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, said
the law contains a “pervasive incentive” for “employers to
drop coverage because it’s cheaper to pay the tax” rather than
insurance premiums.
Premiums’ Cost
In a column in today’s Washington Post, Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius disputed Camp’s contention
about rising premiums. She also said the share of small
businesses offering employee health-care coverage has held
steady at 59 percent since the law passed.
“This is another of their message weeks dedicated solely
to the politics of their base,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said of the Republican efforts.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, was booed today when he told the national convention of
the NAACP in Houston that he would repeal the health-care law.
House Republicans had pledged to “repeal and replace” the
health care overhaul. Now, Republican leaders have dropped the
word “replace” from their promise.
The omission is the result of an election-year calculation:
They figure they stand to gain from public distaste for the 2010
measure’s central provision, the requirement that most Americans
buy health insurance, and will lose if they start providing
details about what they would do instead.
Status Quo
“They don’t care to replace it,” Ross Baker, a professor
of American politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New
Jersey, said in a telephone interview. “They want to revert to
the status quo. Whatever plan they have is going to end up
alienating somebody, especially during a presidential
campaign.”
The House won’t pursue other major health-care legislation
before the November election because “the big thing is going to
be the election,” Representative Wally Herger, a California
Republican who leads the health subcommittee of the Ways and
Means Committee, said in an interview. “Everybody is looking to
the election, everything is second fiddle to November.”
To contact the reporters on this story:
Roxana Tiron in Washington at
rtiron@bloomberg.net;
James Rowley in Washington at
jarowley@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Jodi Schneider at
jschneider50@bloomberg.net
“You
just say ‘thank you,’” Sykes continued, “send them some flowers, take
them to dinner every now and then. You know, I told my wife you don’t
have to worry about it because, you know, we’ll be married so you know
there’s no sex involved.”
