The Senate Thursday approved on a largely party line vote a budget bill that would repeal the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood, two top priorities of Republicans who control the chamber.
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One amendment would have restored Planned Parenthood funding and created a $1 billion women’s health care clinic safety fund, fully paid for by a new tax on millionaires.
Planned Parenthood received $528 million in government funding a year ago, most of it from Medicaid.
Congress will then send the measure, which also strips federal funding for Planned Parenthood, to Obama who will veto it. The vote failed 48-52. But it’s a move that Republicans nevertheless relish, since it forces the president to veto a repeal of his own law and it makes good on a promise to the GOP base that they won’t let up on efforts to scrap Obamacare.
The amended bill now returns to the House for approval before heading to the president’s desk.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the repeal a victory for middle class families. “Work with us to replace Obamacare with real reforms that lower costs so more Americans can afford to buy insurance”.
This week, government officials said that health care spending grew 5.3% in 2014, the steepest climb since Mr Obama took office. They said Americans’ coverage has improved, with policies now required to insure a wide range of medical services.
The group has been under intensified GOP pressure this year for its role in providing fetal tissue to scientists.
“What they’re doing on this reconciliation is just going nowhere”, said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Planned Parenthood has denied that it broke any laws and accepted illegal compensation. The Cadillac tax repeal has broad bipartisan support, and talks about repealing it in separate legislation continue.
Democrats argued that thanks to the law, millions of US citizens had health coverage. The group says the videos were deceptively doctored and say it has done nothing illegal.
Instead, she said that what the legislators did was give the people the “cold shoulder of indifference”. Between violence at health centers and a variety of legislative attacks against reproductive health care providers, women in this country are facing an unprecedented number of barriers when they need to end a pregnancy safely and legally.
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“It’s either repeal or nothing”, Sen. These are children we’re talking about. This is a proposal that has the support of 90 percent of Americans, but even in the wake of another mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the Republicans still opposed it (see my earlier point about pacifying a rabid base of voters).
