House Votes to Repeal Obamacare, Republicans Unanimously Back Repeal

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 16, 2013   |   6:47PM   |   Washington, DC

The House of Representatives today voted for the third time since 2011 to repeal the Obamacare law that presents abortion funding and rationing concerns for pro-life advocates.

“Only two Democrats voted with Republicans in the party-line 229-195 vote, and no Republicans voted against repeal,” the Hill reports. “This is the 37th time the House GOP has voted to repeal or defund at least part of the bill, but this latest bill will also not become law given Democrats’ control of the Senate.”

The vote comes as the Obama administration is facing numerous scandals, ranging from the IRS discriminating against pro-life groups to the HHS Department paying for promoting Obamacare with funds raised from big corporations.

“In light of the recent revelations that have just come out within this last week regarding the outrageous activities of the Internal Revenue Service pointed against the people of the United States, every American should be concerned about the negative consequences of this bill, ObamaCare,” Bachmann said.

“The Supreme Court has ruled that ObamaCare is in fact a tax. Knowing that it’s a tax, the logical conclusion is that the entity in the United States tasked with enforcing tax policy is the IRS.”

More broadly, Republicans said ObamaCare failed to live up to Democratic promises that the law would lower healthcare costs and cover all Americans, and yet is still too expensive to implement and comes with regulatory strings that will hurt job creation and not help improve healthcare.

“We in the majority fundamentally disagree that more government is the answer,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said. “Sweeping mandates on individuals and businesses will not improve our healthcare.”

In a letter to members of Congress previously, the National Right to Life Committee said it is concerned about both abortion funding and health care rationing.

“NRLC vigorously opposed enactment of the Obamacare law in 2009-2010, because of its multiple provisions authorizing federal subsidies for abortion insurance, multiple provisions allowing abortion-expansive federal mandates, and multiple provisions that will place unacceptable limits on the right of vulnerable Americans to use their own money, if they choose, to obtain both health care and health insurance less likely to deny needed health care,” the pro-life group explained.

It continued:  “Since its inception, the pro-life movement has been as concerned with protecting the lives of older people and people with disabilities from euthanasia, including the involuntary denial of treatment, food, and fluids necessary to prevent death, as it has been dedicated to protecting unborn children from abortion.”

Meanwhile, the Susan B. Anthony List has urged members to vote for repeal as well and focused on abortion funding.

“Obamacare creates heavy federal subsidies – your tax dollars – to help pay for insurance plans that cover elective abortion,” it said in an action alert to its membership. “Millions of Americans will be enrolled – many unknowingly – in health care plans that include elective abortion coverage.”

“These plans will charge enrollees, regardless of age and gender, a minimum of $1 per month – an “abortion surcharge” that will go into an abortion slush fund. Under a rule recently issued by Health and Human Services (HHS), the existence of the “abortion surcharge” only needs to be disclosed once – in the fine print – during the enrollment process,” SBA continued. “This surcharge is included without itemization in the monthly premium and is never disclosed again.

The Supreme Court incorrectly ruled that Obamacare is constitutional, pro-life groups said in response to the decision.

Under the enacted law, federal tax-based subsidies will begin in 2014 to subsidize millions of private insurance plans that will cover abortion-on-demand, including some plans (“multi-state plans”) that will be administered by the federal government. Under another provision of the law, the federal government could even order many plans that do not receive federal subsidies to cover abortion as a “preventive” service.  The law also created an array of other mechanisms and funding pipelines by which access to and subsidies for abortion can be expanded if President Obama wins a second term.