Issue: H.R. 45 To repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.
Result: Passed in House 229 to 195, 9 not voting. Democrats scored.
Bill Summary: H.R. 45, as passed in the House amended, would repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and restore provisions of law amended by such Act.
H.R. 45 would also repeal the health care provisions of the follow-up Health Care and Education and Reconciliation Act of 2010 and restore provisions of law amended by that Act’s health care provisions. President Obama signed the latter Act a week after he signed the Obamacare measure.
Analysis: Government did not create the great medical breakthroughs of the previous century that spawned a health care industry. However, government can claim responsibility for the skyrocketing costs of health care, particularly after it began processing Medicare and Medicaid claims.
Prior to the establishment of Medicaid in 1965, the poor in most areas were provided free medical care if they requested it, often from generous doctors. The socialist drive to nationalize health care, dating back almost a century, has nothing to do with caring for the poor and everything to do with building authoritarian government. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) represented a major advance in that power grab.
The principal features of Obamacare include: the requirement that almost all individuals carry federally approved health insurance or pay a penalty; federal standards of coverage for insurance plans; and subsidized insurance for individuals below a certain income level, to be paid for by the forced enlargement of the pool of insured healthy individuals. Then there is the employer mandate requiring employers with more than 50 employees to offer a prescribed minimum of health insurance coverage to employees who work 30 or more hours per week. Authority for none of this can be found in the Constitution.
Although Obamacare was advertised as making health care more universally affordable, the claim that costs in the free market must be controlled through legislation is a socialist myth. Legislative intervention merely adds new costs, forces one group to subsidize another, or leads to the cancellation of services that cannot survive the increased uneconomic burden.
Edward Annis, M.D., who became president of the American Medical Association, was a major opponent of the first successful federal inroads in controlling health care. His 1962 nationally televised rebuttal to President Kennedy from Madison Square Garden was the principal factor in killing congressional support for the Walter Reuther-driven King Anderson bill (Medicare). In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, President Johnson resurrected the dead measure as something Congress owed the late president and that’s how medicare became the law of the land.
In his 1993 Code Blue, Health Care in Crisis, Dr. Annis explained why health care had become so expensive: “There is no more efficient method of delivering health care than the private doctor serving the patient who pays a fee directly for the service rendered.”
In 2010 the Democratic majority accomplished the Obamacare power grab using typical socialist humanitarian pretexts. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership has no intention of rolling back the clock and getting the federal government totally out of the health care business.
The Republican acceptance of the federal role can be seen in the GOP leadership’s proposed alternatives to Obamacare. Moreover, few if any politicians are willing to risk media disparagement by informing Americans of the real agenda behind the socialist power grab — control the people by first making them dependent on government for basic necessities.
So the much-touted GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare or portions of it are just posturing. Everyone realizes that the legislation will not survive in the Senate, let alone on President Obama’s desk. Such posturing by the House doesn’t qualify as even a temporary fix. What America needs is sufficient support in Washington to reverse the power grab, and that can only come from a better informed electorate.
Accordingly, we do not give credit to the GOP for their posturing votes. However, the two Democrats, Matheson and McIntyre, who voted to repeal the socialist power grab in opposition to their party’s leaders, deserve recognition.
We have assigned (good vote) to the Yeas and (bad vote) to the Nays. (P = voted present; ? = not voting; blank = not listed on roll call.)