House Overwhelmingly Passes Health Care Fix

The Statue of Freedom crowns the dome of the
U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C

This afternoon at 1:36 pm, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill that would reverse and extend all cancelled privatehealth care plans.

Five million insured have already received cancellation notices under a regulation of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA).

About fifteen million private health insurance policies were in effect prior to the disastrous October 1^st enrollment rollout of the ACA.

The final tally to renew private plans and to permit the sale of new ones passed by a vote of 261 to 157, a margin of 104, or 66% above votes recorded in the negative.

The not-so-surprising outcome is that while the GOP count was 222 in favor, 39 Democrats joined the Republicans.  The House bill will now go to the U.S. Senate where it faces an unsure outcome.

Senate Majority leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) may refuse to bring it up for a floor vote, since he controls that process.  He has been consistently adamant about recognizing any bill which may threaten his control of the Senate voting process.

However, as many as a dozen Democrats in the Senate – perhaps more –are clamoring for an adjustment to the Affordable Care Act. 

One of those, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana has a proposal to alter the ACA, allowing the reinstatement of cancelled insurance plans.  She is running for re-election next year.

Meanwhile, another Democrat in the Senate, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire wants to delay the entire Healthcare.gov enrollment process for at least two months and to give Kathleen Sebelius of Health and Human Services (HHS) the authority to extend the enrolment period even longer if necessary.

President Obama has vowed to veto such bills if they reach his desk. 

Ironically, even though he reversed himself this week by stating that he will permit insurance companies to reinstate cancelled private health plans, the insurance industry says that it is too late to do that.

Paradoxically, ACA legislation clearly states that private health policies not in line with ACA regulations must be cancelled. 

This puts President Obama’s administration clearly in the position of not enforcing part of its own signature legislation.