US News

GOP-controlled House votes to repeal Obama’s health law

WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House has voted to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law. But the election-year move stands no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The vote Wednesday was 244-185. By the Republican count, it was the 33rd time in 18 months that the tea party-infused GOP majority has tried to scrap, defund or scale back the law since grabbing the majority.

The vote came two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that the law — Obama’s signature domestic achievement — was constitutional.

Republicans criticized the law as a job-killing threat to the economic recovery. Democrats said repeal would eliminate consumer protections that already have improved the lives of millions.

The Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature domestic achievement, would extend coverage to about 30 million of the estimated 50 million uninsured.

Two years after its enactment, polling shows that it remains unpopular and highly divisive among the American people.

The law contributed to the defeat of many House Democrats in the 2010 elections and the party’s loss of majority control.

Still, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi dismissed the election-year implications.

“The politics be damned. We came here to do a job,” Pelosi told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference in which various individuals, including some with illnesses, offered their gratitude for the law.

Under the act, Americans who don’t get qualified health insurance will be required to pay the penalty — or tax — starting for the 2014 tax year, unless they are exempt because of low income, religious beliefs or because they are members of American Indian tribes.

The penalty will be fully phased in by 2016, when it will be $695 for each uninsured adult or 2.5 percent of family income, whichever is greater, up to $12,500.

With AP