House Passes Health Care Repeal
Leaders refuse to schedule in Senate so House will introduce specific bills.
Compiled by staff
Published: Jan 20, 2011
Late Wednesday afternoon the House of Representatives, voting mostly along party lines, repealed the health care law that was passed last year by a 245 to 189 vote. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has already said he has no plans to take up debate on this repeal legislation.
Thursday House Republicans are expected to begin work on specific bills intended to dismantle the health care law. Some of the measures being written would open an interstate market for health insurance, boost tax deductions for health care and make other changes to fulfill the GOP's promise to "repeal and replace" the overhaul.
The process will include a resolution to provide guidelines to committees on how to replace the health care overhaul, and that vote will begin a GOP-led process to take apart the law piece by piece.
The Republican leadership has been accused of making a priority of an ideologically driven and largely futile attempt to repeal the healthcare law when the economy is a more urgent matter, the same accusation leveled against Obama by his opponents.
But Republicans say that overturning healthcare legislation is intended to remove a financial burden on business and to cut the budget deficit. New Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, says that the healthcare law will increase spending, increase taxes and destroy jobs in America.
A study by the Congressional Budget Office disagrees, saying that scrapping the healthcare reforms will cost $230 billion over the next decade.
Representative Steve King, D-Iowa says he wouldn't like to see a big Republican bill that's got hundreds or thousands of pages in it, but individual, stand-alone pieces of legislation so they can be debated in front of the American people in the light of day.
Permalink: Click here
Tagged: insurance
|