On Wednesday, February 2, the U.S. Senate voted 51-47 against a largely symbolic amendment that would repeal the health care reform legislation enacted last year. (The amendment was to an unrelated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funding bill.) Senate Republicans unanimously backed the amendment, which would have repealed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), but no Democrats voted in favor of the measure.
Even if the Senate had approved the repeal amendment, it was unlikely to move much further since President Barack Obama had previously indicated that he would veto it. The Senate did, however, pass another amendment to the FAA bill that would repeal a tax-reporting provision found in the PPACA by an 81-17 vote.
This is not the Republicans’ first attempt to repeal the legislation. In January, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal the PPACA by passing the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act (H.R. 2) in a 245-189 vote. The bill was largely approved along party lines, with all 242 Republicans and only three Democrats voting in favor of the measure.
Republicans have other ways of fighting the PPACA, including legal challenges to the constitutionality of the law. In fact, earlier this week, a second federal court held that the individual health insurance mandate provision found in the PPACA, which would require most individuals to obtain health insurance or pay a fine, is unconstitutional. Additionally, as part of the Republicans’ “repeal and replace” strategy, they want to change the PPACA by getting rid of some of its provisions and replacing others.
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