WASHINGTON – In a stinging rebuke to President Obama, 39 House Democrats joined Republicans to pass a bill Friday that would allow insurance companies to keep selling health plans that don’t meet ObamaCare standards.
The 161-157 vote came a day after a contrite President Obama apologized for his own role in the ObamaCare rollout fiasco and, in an abrupt shift, asked insurance companies to extend plans on the individual market for one year to current policy holders.
The bill sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) expands that option to anyone who wants to buy those policies, not just consumers who already have them.
Seasoned lawmakers predicted that had Obama not made the change Thursday, the Democratic defections would have been a lot worse.
“I haven’t seen this much panic on the [House] floor since 9/11,” said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.).
Democratic leaders said a vote for the GOP plan would gut ObamaCare by allowing a whole separate class of health plans to exist. The president vowed to veto the bill. The Democratic-controlled Senate wasn’t preparing to consider it.
“What [Republicans] clearly want to do is dismantle and repeal” ObamaCare, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who chairs the Democratic National Committee, told The Post.
But the argument had little effect on those worried about their re-election chances next year.
Nearly every Democrat on the Cook Political Report’s list of “tossup” and competitive “lean Democrat” races in 2014 voted for the Republican bill – an indication of how fearful Democrats are about the potential political fallout from being attached to the new national health plan.
“I’m disgusted about it. I think heads should roll downtown — whoever was responsible or may have known that this was going to occur should no longer be employed,” fumed West Virginia Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall, one of the defecting Democrats.
Among those bolting their party were New York Reps. Tim Bishop, Dan Maffei, Bill Owens, and Sean Patrick Maloney.
Not that the vote insulated Bishop, who represents Suffolk County, from the House Republican campaign arm.
“No matter what this Washington politician says, Tim Bishop voted to give us ObamaCare and keep ObamaCare on the books,” the National Republican Campaign Committee said in a blast e-mail minutes after the vote.
“We’re frustrated,” explained Democratic Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly. “It’s just a cumulative frustration, drip drip drip, when we ought to be at this point celebrating” achievements in the new health law.
“If you’re in a marginal district, you’re always calculating – fall on your sword over this one?”
He diplomatically described the Democratic leadership’s message as “please vote no” — but for those in very marginal districts “obviously the exercise of their conscience will be respected.”
In July, 22 Democrats voted for a Republican bill to delay ObamaCare’s “individual mandate” that people must buy insurance or face a penalty.
Friday’s vote came as new documents revealed that during the botched launch of the ObamaCare web site, a U.S. health official feared quality assurance issues
could “crash the plane at take-off.”
The day after he wrote that email, HealthCare.gov project manager Henry Chao assured a House subcommittee that the site would be ready on time, according to documents released by the Energy and Commerce Committee.