President Barack Obama’s Republican foes in the US Senate set the stage Tuesday for a vote this week on repealing his signature health care overhaul, but were all but certain to fall well short.
The White House’s Democratic allies, who control 53 seats in the 100-member chamber, echoed Obama’s offer to improve the landmark law but pledged to defeat any effort to repeal it entirely.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a nod to Republican campaign promises to attack the measure head-on, told reporters the vote would forward because “we want to get this out of their system very quickly.”
“It’s not going to go anyplace,” Reid told reporters.
Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, backed by the other 46 members of his party in the Senate, moved to attach an amendment repealing the health law to a broader bill on modernizing US air travel.
“It’s not every day that you can get a second chance on a big decision after you know all the facts. Today is one of those days,” McConnell said.
The Senate vote, expected in the coming days, came after the Republican-held House of Representatives voted 245-189 to repeal the health care legislation and then moved to craft their party’s version of the overhaul.
The law, which Obama signed in March 2010 after a year-long battle, aims to extend coverage to 31 million of the 36 million Americans who currently lack insurance.
It requires most Americans to buy insurance and offers subsidies for low-income families to do so, while forbidding insurers from denying coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions.
Recent polls have found the US public deeply divided over the law, but only about one in four favoring outright repeal.
Although the United States is the world’s richest nation, it is the only industrialized democracy that does not provide health care coverage to all its citizens.
Republicans meanwhile exulted over a ruling Monday in which a federal judge declared the law unconstitutional — the second to do so after Republicans in 26 US states mounted court challenges against the overhaul.
US District Judge Roger Vinson said a key provision of the law known as the “individual mandate” exceeds Congress’s regulatory powers by requiring Americans to either purchase health insurance by 2014 or pay a fine.
The Obama administration immediately pledged to appeal and branded the ruling by a Florida judge as an “outlier” from the judicial mainstream, warning that health care costs would soar if it were allowed to stand.
The pitched battle was expected to wind its way to the US Supreme Court, where observers were already predicting a narrow 5-4 ruling — which could go either way.
Washington, Feb 1, 2011 (AFP)
