House Votes 245-189 To Repeal Affordable Care Act

In a move that surprises nobody, the House voted today to repeal last year's health care reform law. Now it goes to the Senate where it will die.

Not surprising anyone, the House late today passed a bill to repeal the health care reform law that became law less than a year ago:

The House on Wednesday evening passed a bill that would repeal the national health care overhaul, approving the measure on a largely party-line vote.

The repeal bill passed 245 to 189, with three Democrats – Reps. Mike Ross (Ark.), Dan Boren (Ind.) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.) – joining Republicans in backing the measure. The three were among the four Democrats who voted earlier this month to advance the measure. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who remains in serious condition following this month’s mass shooting in Tucson, was the only lawmaker not voting.

The bill’s passage came after Democrats unsuccessfully staged an eleventh-hour vote in an effort to derail the Republican-sponsored measure.

The Democratic move, which would have made the repeal effort ineffective unless a majority of lawmakers gave up their federal health care benefits within 30 days of the bill’s passage, fell short in the GOP-led House.

While the repeal passed the House, ultimately, it is expected to fail.

Harry Reid has already said that he does not intend to bring the bill up for a vote, which has led to the amusing spectacle of Republicans complaining about the Senate blocking legislation:

House Republicans’ effort to push a wholesale repeal of President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform legislation appears destined to hit a legislative brick wall immediately after its passage in the lower chamber this afternoon.

But new Majority Leader Eric Cantor is still challenging Democrats in the Senate to bring the measure up for consideration, daring Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid: “Let’s see the votes!”

“I think the American people deserve to see a vote in the Senate, and the Senate ought not be a place where legislation goes into a dead end,” Cantor told reporters Wednesday.

Congressman Cantor, perhaps you need to have a talk with your fellow Republicans in the Senate.

Anyway, the House GOP can now say it has fulfilled a campaign promise. Let’s see some real work now.

FILED UNDER: Congress, Healthcare Policy, US Politics, , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. anjin-san says:

    Worth noting that the GOP members passed on an opportunity to decline their own government health care.

    One standard for the princes, another for the peasants. Have a nice day in the shining city on the hill…

  2. george says:

    Actually it would be kind of amusing to see the Republicans complaining about the senate blocking legislation – definitely be popcorn time.

    Aren’t you supposed to wait a couple of years until people forget the past before you complain about what you’ve spent the last few years doing? Or is the attention span now so short that you can do so after just a couple of months?

  3. athiest hater says:

    It’s Palin’s fault

  4. athiest hater says:

    Nancy Pelosi on suicide watch ?????

  5. athiest hater says:

    ” Let’s see some real work now”

    How about a “laser like” focus on job creation from Hussein ????

    LOL !!!!

  6. anjin-san says:

    definitely be popcorn time.

    Jiffy Pop will make a killing.

  7. athiest hater says:

    No more death panels folks!

  8. athiest hater says:

    “It was a bi-partisan vote”

    -Hotair

    HALARIOUS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  9. PD Shaw says:

    Wait a minute, I was against Obamacare, before I knew it was Affordable Care. Very clever.

  10. sam says:

    “No more death panels folks!”

    Unless you live in Arizona.

  11. athiest hater says:

    “Unless you live in Arizona.”

    or the west coast and the northeast

  12. swift boater says:

    The only bi-partisan votes concerning Obamacare is those voting against it, both times.

    For all those lawyers out there, I am sure you know the truth about the Senate the last few years. Harry Reid is taking advantage of his role as Leader and preventing the Republicans from offering any of their amendments for consideration. Hence the Repubs are trying to prevent Reid’s unprecedented abuse of power and holding up his one sided bills.

    O, and why should the Republicans decline their employer sponsored healthcare? As a matter of fact theirs is one of the plans that the Obama and his czars have exempted from Obamacare. Strictly pre-Obamacare, to have turned it down would have been the hypocrisy.

  13. athiest hater says:

    Can we please go back to how Sara Palin caused the Tuscon shootings????

  14. PD Shaw says:

    Admit it anjin-san, you saw the recent coverage of Dick Cheney, looking thin and infirm, hooked up to machines to keep him alive, at seventy years of age casually thinking of a heart transplant someday in the future, and Obama’s words came back so hauntingly . . .

    “Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”

    He’s more machine now than man . . .

  15. mantis says:

    House Votes 245-189 To Repeal Affordable Care Act

    Victory!

    I love how Fox reports it online:

    House GOP Set to Repeal Health Care

    It’s about time we got rid of health care. After the vote, the headline:

    House GOP Repeals ‘ObamaCare’

    The sad thing is, from what we know about the average Fox viewer, many of them will think it has actually been repealed.

  16. anjin-san says:

    Well PD, I certainly won’t deny that Cheney gives every indication of being twisted and evil.

    It was sad to see him looking that frail. He is a man of considerable gifts, and tough as nails. I just wish he had devoted his talents to a better cause.

  17. mantis says:

    The only bi-partisan votes concerning Obamacare is those voting against it, both times.

    Yep. Three whole Democrats this time. The other ten Dems remaining in the House who voted against the reforms did not side with the Republicans’ “Repeal and Do Nothing” Killing Americans for Profit Act of 2011.

    For all those lawyers out there, I am sure you know the truth about the Senate the last few years. Harry Reid is taking advantage of his role as Leader and preventing the Republicans from offering any of their amendments for consideration.

    Really now? Is that the “truth about the Senate?” You want to, you know, peruse the records a bit and look at all the Republican amendments that have been voted on in the Senate? Might be enlightening.

  18. Terrye says:

    It might die, it might not…but then again Pelosi sent something like 400 bills to the Senate to die. But that was different because she is a Democrat and they live by different rules than the wons they like to shove down everyone else’s throats.

    And who cares if Republicans did not vote down their own health care? What does that have to do with anything? It is not as if Obamacare has anything in common with the health care plan Congress has anyway. This kind of ridiculous demand is the typical demagoguery and sanctimony we have come to expect from supporters of a partisan policy they knew the public did not support and insisted on anyway.

    The truth is Democrats screwed up by passing this thing the way they did and these Republicans are doing just what they told voters they would do. If Democrats don’t like it, they have no one but themselves to blame.

  19. Oh, I thought you meant Obamacare was going to the Senate to die.

  20. Steve Plunk says:

    They promised to vote for repeal and they fulfilled that promise. Symbolic? Yes. The right thing to do? Of course. Knowing it won’t pass the Senate or the President doesn’t make the vote unimportant.

  21. An Interested Party says:

    “It might die, it might not…but then again Pelosi sent something like 400 bills to the Senate to die. But that was different because she is a Democrat and they live by different rules than the wons they like to shove down everyone else’s throats.”

    You do realize that it a pathetic argument you are trying to make? I’d love to know how it might not…perhaps Christine O’Donnell will make a surprise appearance in the Senate chamber and put a spell on anyone who refuses to vote against what the House sends over…

  22. Davebo says:

    But that was different because she is a Democrat and they live by different rules than the wons they like to shove down everyone else’s throats.

    Again with the wingnut oral fixation. Could you guys please come up with more family friendly key words?

  23. anjin-san says:

    > And who cares if Republicans did not vote down their own health care? What does that have to do with anything?

    Terrye – Quite right. If John Bohner gets a hangnail, a full bird Colonel from Walter Reed will come to his office and fix it. So he does not give a rat’s ass about some hard-working American slob who’s kid is probably going to die because the insurance company found a way to cancel him even after paying premiemum for years.

    The health care that a GOP member of Congress absolutely does not have anything to do with what an average American gets. Like I said, princes and peasants. George Washington would be proud.

  24. anjin-san says:

    > They promised to vote for repeal and they fulfilled that promise. Symbolic? Yes. The right thing to do

    Of course. Why waste any time on something like say… cutting spending? How is that coming along?

  25. john personna says:

    They promised to vote for repeal and they fulfilled that promise. Symbolic? Yes. The right thing to do? Of course. Knowing it won’t pass the Senate or the President doesn’t make the vote unimportant.

    This demonstrates how the Scale of Political Development is so different from the Scale of Moral Development.

  26. Herb says:

    “Knowing it won’t pass the Senate or the President doesn’t make the vote unimportant.”

    Depends on your definition of important, I guess. This vote in the House wasn’t a serious effort to repeal Obamacare. It’s going to die in the Senate, but even if it somehow survived, the veto pen would have been a deathblow.

    I think what’s happening here is that the Republicans know their base will support them even if they offer little more than symbolic gestures. “Symbolic legislation that has no prayer of passing??? Awesome! More please!”

    Meanwhile, we may see a more serious effort by Republicans to reform aspects of Obamacare in the coming months. Too bad they couldn’t do that before the damn bill was passed, though….

    Much better to string along the suckers for next term’s vote.

  27. ponce says:

    “The RINOs made sure that didnt happen”

    What’s with all the self-loathing from our wingnut posters today?

    Have they realized this meaningless vote is the only thing the Republicans are gonna give them for all their support?

  28. floyd says:

    Morpheus;
    Have you read Orwell’s ” Animal Farm”?

  29. anjin-san says:

    > Have you read Orwell’s ” Animal Farm”?

    I read it in 7th grade. Can I be part of the gang??

  30. G.A.Phillips says:

    ***Again with the wingnut oral fixation. Could you guys please come up with more family friendly key words?*** homophobic?

  31. Neil Hudelson says:

    Morpheus,

    A site with background music? That automatically plays? Now I see you are a serious political actor. Awesome! Count me in!

  32. anjin-san says:

    Morphues,

    Interesting site. I see they cite Paul Krugman on the homepage. Cool. I like him. Do you have any idea at all what he is about? Here is something else he wrote:

    But the health insurance market for individuals has never worked. If the market is left loosely regulated, as it is in California, insurance companies devote large resources to determining who really needs health care, so as not to provide it; this both leads to huge administrative costs and leaves anyone with a chronic condition, or in fact anything that hints at possible trouble, out in the cold. If the state instead imposes community rating, as in New York – that is, if insurers are required to offer the same terms to anyone, regardless of medical history – you get caught in an “adverse selection death spiral”, in which healthy people don’t buy insurance, meaning that rates reflect the expenses of the unhealthy, which drives out even more healthy people, etc..

    So what do we do? One answer is government-provided insurance.

    So the people who are shaping your thinking about politics are either:

    A. Remarkably ignorant (certainly not a deal breaker on the right)

    or

    B. Intellectually and morally bankrupt, IE they are willing to take someone’s remarks out of context to promote their own agenda. (again, not a deal breaker on the right)

    Welcome to OTB.

  33. floyd says:

    “I read it in 7th grade. Can I be part of the gang??”
    “”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
    anjin-san;
    Since you have obviously read it VERY recently, of course you can, I guess the “gang” can forego any requirement for comprehension….You can put your hand down now!

  34. anjin-san says:

    That’s cute Floyd. BTW, you can’t borrow my first edition of 1984.

    You might want to move on to other works by Orwell. Keep the Aspidistra Flying is one. Sarah Palin has probably never heard of it, but that’s ok, it is still a keeper. You might want to give Aldous Huxley’s “Ape and essence” a look too.

    Warning – If you read this stuff, they may confiscate your tea party secret decoder ring.

  35. G.A.Phillips says:

    ***A site with background music? That automatically plays?***My DDO guild website is like that, to bad my web designer went over to play WOW:(

  36. george says:

    “Have you read Orwell’s ” Animal Farm”?”

    In this case, I think Orwell’s “1984” is more applicable, especially regarding ‘double think’.

  37. mantis says:

    Michelle Bachmann on the House floor yesterday:

    This is why we were sent here, and we will not stop until we repeal a president and put a president in the position of the White House who will repeal this bill, until we repeal the current Senate, put in a Senate that will listen to the American people and repeal this bill.

    They’re going to “repeal a president” and “repeal the current Senate,” eh?

    With such geniuses leading the charge, how can Republicans go wrong?

  38. john personna says:

    Awesome:

    Here’s the background. Ungar points out that in July of 1798, Congress passed “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seaman,” which was signed by President Adams. That law authorized the creation of a government operated system of marine hospitals and mandated that laboring merchant marine sailors pay a tax to support it.

    Ungar argues that this blows away the argument made by many opponents of the individual mandate: That it’s unconstitutional to mandate that all citizens purchase health coverage, or that this violates the founding fathers’ view of the proper role of government.

  39. mantis says:

    Pfft. Adams. That commie?