Congress is poised to dispatch an Obamacare repeal bill to President Obama’s desk Wednesday, fulfilling a long-standing but elusive goal for Republicans who seized the House in 2011 and reaffirmed their vow after taking control of the Senate last year.
The bill would also strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood for one year in the wake of videos showing organization officials negotiating the sale of fetal body parts, offering a pro-life statement about two weeks before thousands of marchers descend on Washington to protest abortion.
President Obama has said he’ll veto the legislation, and there’s little chance of Republicans overriding him, but the showdown is still expected to rally conservatives and set the tone for the election year.
Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, said Mr. Obama must take political accountability for his signature law, the Affordable Care Act of 2010, as customers in some parts of the country see “sticker shock” even as they’re mandated to hold insurance.
The nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth Group, recently said it is losing money on the law’s exchange and may pull out entirely by 2017, while more than half of Obamacare’s 23 nonprofit co-ops will not offer plans in 2016, fueling the GOP’s arguments.
“We are confronting the president with the hard, honest truth — Obamacare doesn’t work,” Mr. Ryan said at a press briefing Wednesday.
The GOP said the experience offers a road map for 2017, when it hopes to scrap Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement and start over with a Republican president and a slim majority in the Senate.
Republicans used a budget process known as “reconciliation” that allowed them to pass a revenue-related bill by a majority vote, without having to overcome Democratic-led filibusters that have doomed every previous Obamacare repeal.
“He’s going to actually confront this issue,” House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, said.
Democrats say their rivals’ claims are hollow and misguided. Repeal would strip coverage of some form from 22 million Americans, they’ve argued, and the GOP has had five years to craft and vote on an alternative to Mr. Obama’s vision but have failed to do so.
House Republicans pushed the reconciliation bill through their chamber in October but must approve changes the Senate made in December.
The Senate’s beefed-up version would phase out the law’s exchange subsidies for private plans and the expansion of Medicaid in select states.
Among other provisions, the bill would repeal the “individual mandate” requiring individuals to hold health insurance and the “employer mandate” that forces larger firms to offer coverage to full-time workers or pay fines.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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