Posted on 02/26/2012 7:33:13 AM PST by Libloather
House GOP to renew attacks on health law as Supreme Court hears case
By Julian Pecquet - 02/25/12 06:00 PM ET
House Republicans are planning renewed attacks against President Obama's healthcare reform law to coincide with Supreme Court arguments next month.
The high court will hear challenges to the law's individual mandate and Medicaid expansion for six hours over three days, starting March 26. House Republicans are planning to ride the renewed focus on the law to chip away at controversial provisions, a leadership aide told The Hill, including its cost-control panel – the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB – that some Republicans have labeled a “death panel.”
“We're going to be timing legislative action with the Supreme Court's hearings at the end of the month,” the aide said, “and that IPAB repeal is certainly one of the issues we're working on.”
Another likely target: The health law's requirement that employees of religiously affiliated institutions have access to birth control without copays.
During a rare floor speech earlier this month, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) called on Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to find an “effective and appropriate solution” to what critics of the mandate are calling a violation of religious freedoms. The same day, Upton said his committee would vote “in the coming weeks” on legislation overturning the mandate.
“I plan to move quickly, working with my colleagues who share the commitment to the First Amendment, to advance legislation that restores the protections that are now imperiled,” Upton said.
Separately, Reps. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) and Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) both already have bills overturning the so-called “birth control mandate” pending in Upton's committee.
Legislation to repeal the IPAB however moved to the front of the line Friday when the committee's health subpanel announced its intention to mark up the bill Wednesday morning. The bill from Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) has 16 Democrats among its 224 co-sponsors – including high-ranking members like Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) – and is expected to sail through the House.
Republicans hope to use the IPAB repeal bill to force Democrats to take a public stance that could hurt them politically whichever way they vote. They also hope that bipartisan support for repeal will raise the pressure on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to bring up the bill in his chamber, which remains unlikely.
The 15-member IPAB board is tasked with recommending Medicare provider payment cuts if federal healthcare spending grows faster than a targeted rate. Pressure grew on Democrats to strike down the panel on Friday when 24 medical organizations – led by neurosurgeons, anesthesiologists and OB-GYNs – representing 350,000 physicians urged the Energy and Commerce health panel to favorably report the repeal bill.
“Leaving Medicare payment decisions in the hands of an unelected, unaccountable body with minimal congressional oversight will negatively affect timely access to quality health care for our country's senior citizens and the disabled,” reads the letter to panel chairman Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) and ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.).
“Hundreds of Democrat and Republican Members of Congress and organizations representing seniors, veterans, consumers, patients, healthcare providers, business and others are all calling for the repeal of IPAB. Please join them and vote to repeal the IPAB,” the letter said.
On the flip side, the mechanism is one of the few provisions of the health reform law that aims to curb healthcare costs. The provision would shave $28 billion off the deficit through 2019, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated, and President Obama proposed strengthening it by calling for lower spending targets as part of his deficit-cutting proposal last year.
I’ve been down on Ann Coulter lately but her characterization of Obamacare as socialism by insurance was spot on. If we let it the imaginary right to health care will swallow up all of our other true inalienable rights. Religious freedom is just the first soldier on the front lines to sustain attack. And every victory along the way will just make them stronger.
In 1935, FDR was publicly proclaiming his Social Security Act was a modest retirement program to ensure a little something for old-age pensioners.
Whereas in court FDR’s lawyers were arguing that Social Security was a tax that was constitutional under the 16th AMENDMENT.
Obama/Biden and their circle of people have confirmed they are using the FDR Social Security playbook. Biden has even said that is Obamacare if found to be unconstitutional, then Social Security would likewise be unconstitutional.
Obama’s lawyers are today in court arguing that Obamacare is a tax.
The challengers to Obamacare will be successful with respect to Commerce Clause arguments BUT WILL LOSE ON THE TAX ARGUMENT.
The Supreme Court will uphold Obamacare based on the 16th AMENDMENT.
You will be told to shutup and pay your income taxes or else. And if you don’t, the IRS will shut you up and make you pay. And if you say a single word against the 16th AMENDMENT income tax, you will be categorized as a tax protester, monitored and hounded until there is even a slight pretext for taking you out.
Road to Serfdom baby.
Yep to all. I do wonder how Ann would describe Romney care though...
What you say makes sense. Would be interesting for me to hear Mark Levin speak to this premise. Fiscal conservatives do recognize the sink hole that was begun by SS, but by now less affluent Americans have for generations factored it into their retirement needs.
Killing these people off, by way of death squad panels, will pay for Obamacare, but this calls for unraveling Christianity in order to accomplish the death agenda on both ends of life.
Why attack it, when they have the power in the house to DEFUND IT? Because the house leadership are weaklings.
Glad somebody has. It should mellow her out a bit. But seriously, is there any truth to the report that she will be offered the "Press Secretary" job in a Romney administration?
Just empty Republican Party Hack words, just promises.
If and when the Republicans in the House take a real stand on a vote that means something to Conservatives, let me know....crickets.
Mr. Boehner and the vast majority of the leadership Republicans(and Democrats, by the way) are weak because Ms. Clinton has their FBI files. I have heard that every now and then she will send them anonymous letters with blurry photocopies of the stolen FBI items just to keep them on their toes.
TWB
Don't trust to the GOP to do anything about obamacare except contribute to the expulsion of greenhouse gases.
For heaven's sake I hope you are wrong. But if the Fed Gov can force citizens to buy a healthcare policy or face a fine, then why not force every qualified citizen to by a handgun or a crucifix or a gas-guzzling SUV.
Better yet, let the Fed Gov require all federal judiciary to buy black robes with large horizontal stripes or face a huge fine. Kinda like prison garb.
House Republicans should be attacking Kagan’s refusal to recuse herself.
I’d feel better if Ann Coulter hadn’t bent over backwards to defend Romneycare.
And this is the rub. One person, one individual, one idiot, gets to decide what our rights are and what they are not. So our rights are subject to the capricious decision of a bureaucrat. Tyranny has arrived via Obamacare.
oops wrong thread
Your question is simply answered that you need not pay a tax if you can prove that you have government approved health insurance, otherwise you pay the tax. Obamacare will be a tax and they will offer you a tax credit if you can prove you have it.
This is the 16th Amendment at work. 100 years of a slow walk to socialism.
Believe it or not there are elderly alive today that remember their parents never paid or had to file an income tax report.
We need a revolution badly, a Tea Party Tsunami that will go the distance and repeal the 16th. Here is the Tax Reform that will do that and allow for us to cut spending and tax rates every year:
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq
Oh, yeah, you can't reconcile it. It's a pity to see Ann become the person she was eviscerating on television interviews just two years ago. they all sell out eventually.
Fairtax. You are preaching to the choir. Ah, but the last thing that the Congress will ever do is give up the the power to tax our direct incomes and especially give up their ability to take the money right out of our paychecks before we even touch our paychecks. Yet we must push for it anyhow.
If we could just eliminate any withholding and force every working American to write a check to the US Treasury at the end of every month. The revolt would begin...and then end in a month and a half. Alas, but that earthly utopia will not come about.
100 years of a slow walk to socialism/serfdom...and a slow shrug toward Galt’s gulch!
We actually don’t need Congress :
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124044199838345461.html
And we should learn keenly what Professor Barnett teaches in the above link.
Do not be discouraged that the fairtax is already 11 years old as it took 52 years to be constitutional.
A useful statistic is that it takes about 3,000 fairtax activists in a congressional district to turn the representative to the fairtax.
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