House GOP sends health law repeal to Obama for first time

President Obama will nearly certainly veto the legislation, which passed the House 240-181, and Republicans do not have a large enough majority in Congress to override a veto.

The bill was condemned a news conference by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a freshman Democrat from Trenton who was appointed last fall to a special committee created to investigate Planned Parenthood following the release of videos that an anti-abortion group said showed discussions of selling body parts of aborted fetuses.

While the U.S. House has repeatedly voted to eliminate the abortion giant’s taxpayer funding, this is the first time a measure defunding Planned Parenthood will reach President Barack Obama’s desk, due to the Senate passing it last month by 52 to 47 via the reconciliation process. It passed the Senate late past year, and so Wednesday’s House vote will send it straight to Obama.

“We are confronting the president with the hard, honest truth”, said Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. “We have to go on offense in 2016, and we have to offer a bold agenda to the country”.

“It’s 2016 and House Republicans are still tightly bound to their old, failed playbook, which not only puts the health of millions of Americans at risk, but also threatens Republicans’ standing with women, Latinos and other important groups of voters this election year”, he said. Every single health care plan on the exchange in South Dakota saw a double-digit rate increase this year – every single plan. “Does he support freedom in health care and the conscience rights of the American people?”

“We need to make this year about ideas, not about Obama’s distractions”.

The fight over Obamacare has been a major source of contention between the two parties. Republicans said the law has raised health care costs, limited patients’ ability to choose their doctors, and damaged the economy.

Also untouched would be revisions in Medicare that reward the value of procedures, rather than the volume of procedures, and reduce excessive provider payments.

The House passed similar legislation in October, but changes to the language of the Senate version of the bill require another vote in the House. The House approved the Senate version Wednesday.

In December, Congress voted in separate tax and spending legislation to suspend three taxes meant to fund the health-care law. It also strips the government of its authority to run Obamacare’s exchanges and lessens the fine for failing to comply with the mandates to $0. He will veto it, along with its companion provision to stop federal funding of Planned Parenthood for a year. And it would halt Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid for the poor, which has been adopted by more than 30 states.

Democrats and administration allies, however, denounced the vote as a waste of time.

But Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) called the bill a “political soundbite” and “red meat” for the Republican party’s political base.

The White House has said Obama would veto the repeal bill because it would “take away critical benefits and health care coverage from hardworking middle-class families”.