Late Thursday evening, the U.S. Senate voted 52-47 in favor of the Republican-backed bill, the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act (H.R. 3762), which repeals parts of the Affordable Care Act and cuts millions of dollars from the Planned Parenthood budget, according to the Associated Press.
Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) says the passage of the bill is a win, but a bigger victory would be a full repeal of the law. The budget reconciliation bill zeros out the individual mandate and employer mandate and repeals the medical device tax, “Cadillac tax,” Medicaid expansion, premium subsidies, a prevention and public health fund and bailouts for insurers.
“The nine-page reconciliation bill is a serious strike against the financial infrastructure of the Affordable Care Act,” Twila Brase, president and co-founder of CCHF, said. “However, it does not repeal a majority of the 2,700-page law. If the House accepts and President Obama signs the bill, it would begin to unravel the destructive coverage provisions of the law—the parts of the law that the public is acutely aware of, but not the hidden parts of the law that are causing extensive damage to personal control over health care decisions and the trusted and confidential patient-doctor relationship.
“Enactment of the reconciliation bill would be insufficient to immediately curb the damage taking place in the actual delivery of patient care, such as by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation pilot projects, ACOs and value-based purchasing,” she continued. “To protect patients from outsider-imposed limits on their access to medical care, the entire law must be repealed, something that could become more difficult if the President actually signs this budget reconciliation bill into law.”
Earlier in the day yesterday, the Senate also passed the amendment to repeal the Obamacare “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans, according to TheHill.com.
“Democrats and Republicans agreed that the Cadillac tax is a bad idea and should be repealed,” Brase said. “But the biggest issue is the entire Affordable Care Act, which is an affront to the pocketbooks, privacy and freedom of every American and needs to be repealed. Republicans should not accept a repeal of the Cadillac tax in any form or through any other bill without the repeal of Obamacare. Yesterday’s bipartisan Senate vote to repeal the 40 percent tax demonstrates that repeal of the Cadillac tax is a powerful lever that Republicans can use to persuade Democrats to repeal the entire law. The GOP should not relinquish this power until Democrats agree to repeal the law.”
For more information about CCHF, visit its web site at www.cchfreedom.org, its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/cchfreedom
Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, a patient-centered national health freedom organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota, exists to protect health care choices, individualized patient care, and medical and genetic privacy rights. CCHF sponsors the daily 60-second radio feature, Health Freedom Minute, which airs on approximately 350 stations nationwide.
See an error in this article?
To contact us or to submit an article
