Originally posted August 2, 2013 by Jerry Geisel by https://www.businessinsurance.com
The House of Representatives approved legislation Friday that would bar the U.S. Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service from enforcing the health care reform law.
The Republican-backed measure cleared the House on a 232-185 vote.
Under the bill, H.R. 2009, regulators would be unable to enforce key health care reform law provisions such as the requirement — delayed last month by the Treasury Department to 2015 — that employers with at least 50 full-time employees offer coverage or pay a fee and a 2014 requirement that individuals enroll in a health plan or pay a fine.
The bill — as has been the case with other measures approved by the House to repeal all or part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — is unlikely to be taken up by the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority.
Even if the Senate were to pass the House measure, President Barack Obama would veto it.
The legislation “would raise health insurance premiums and increase the number of uninsured Americans and represents another attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, with no plan to replace it or policy to improve it,” the administration said in a statement by the Office of Management and Budget earlier this week.
Instead of attempting to repeal the reform law, lawmakers should work with the administration on an agenda to provide greater economic security to the middle class, the administration said in the statement.
Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., who introduced the latest House measure to repeal the law, said earlier that “we ought to take this common sense step to take the IRS out of health care.”