It is no longer a surprise to learn that the House of Representatives is getting ready to vote about the Affordable Care Act, yet again. This has happened many, many, times before. No matter what the House decides, the bill would still have to be approved by the Senate before anything could change.
Not every American is interested in politics. However, I think that even the people who don’t watch the news, don’t read the newspaper, and do not use the internet for anything other than Facebook, realize that the Republican party really hates the Affordable Care Act.
This is very apparent in the behavior of the Republican led House of Representatives. To date, they have introduced a total of 30 bills in an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or to dismantle portions of it. Some of the bills have had names like “Reclaiming Individual Liberty Act”, “repeal the Job killing health care law” act, and the “NObamacare Act of 2012”.
This has been going on, in an constant cycle of repeat, for quite some time. In January of 2011, The House of Representatives voted to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act. All 242 House Republicans, and 3 House Democrats, voted to repeal the ACA.
The vote was nothing more than symbolic, because a bill cannot become a law unless both the House of Representatives and the Senate vote for it to be made one. After that, the President has the option of signing it, or using a veto. Clearly, that particular bill never became a law.
March 23, 2012, was the official second anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. The House of Representatives chose that date to vote to repeal a specific portion of the ACA. The vote was 223-181 to dismantle a panel called the Independent Payment Advisory Board.
It is a panel designed to control costs in the Medicare program. Many Republicans have referred to this panel as a “death panel”, but that is nothing more than a scare tactic. In reality, the panel will only take effect if Medicare costs grow too quickly. The fifteen member panel is prohibited from recommending policies that ration care, raise taxes, increase premiums or cost-sharing, restrict benefits, or modify who is eligible for Medicare.
Clearly, that bill didn’t make it past the Senate, either. These are just two examples of the 30 bills that the House of Representatives have passed in attempts to repeal all or part of the ACA. Their 31st attempt is a bill called “Repeal of the Obamacare Act”. It is expected that, once again, the House will vote for this bill to become a law, and that the Senate will vote against it. This will be the second time that the House of Representatives have attempted to pass a bill to repeal the entire ACA.
Once again, this vote will be nothing more than symbolic. The Republicans in the House of Representatives simply want to make it clear that they don’t approve of the Affordable Care Act. As I said before, I believe that this concept is already vividly apparent.
Image by Rob Crawley on Flickr