RETRACTED–DEVELOPING: Health Care Repeal Vote Could Come in the House as Early as THIS FRIDAY, January 7

RETRACTION

It seems as though I’ve got a bit of egg on my face. There will be a vote on Friday, and it will be related to this bill–but it won’t be a vote on the bill itself. It’ll be a vote to determine the rule for debate, as is customary in the House of Representatives:

Majority Leader-elect Eric Cantor (R-Va.) announced Monday the timeline for considering the repeal legislation: The bill posted Monday, the Rules Committee will meet Thursday, and the rule for the debate will be considered on the House floor Friday. The repeal vote will follow on Wednesday, Jan 12.

I offer my apologies to readers for the confusion.

photo credit: theqspeaks

The change in timetable could have come at the urging of Freedom Works president and CEO Matt Kibbe, who recently sent a letter (PDF) to the Hill:

The unintended consequences of the new health care law are heartbreaking. Due to a provision that insurance companies must charge the same rates for healthy and costly sick children, nearly every major insurance company has ceased offering child-only policies. Employer penalties in the law have led some major companies such as 3M to announce that they will no longer be offering health benefits to retirees. Employers have declared that they will drop insurance policies for low-income workers unless they are granted an exemption by the Department of Health and Human Services. So far, over 200 politically connected companies and unions have been offered waivers.

The worst is still to come. The new health care law will cost $2.6 trillion during its first 10 years of full implementation. Ultimately, the law will create 159 new bureaucracies to control our health care. Health care is too important to be run by inefficient government bureaucracies. Moreover, the law includes an individual mandate provision which forces all Americans to purchase health insurance by 2014. A federal judge has already rightfully declared this mandate to be in violation of the Constitution. At a time when federal debt and deficits are at all-time highs, we simply cannot afford this massive new government spending program.

We will count your vote on the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act,” as a KEY VOTE when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2011. The Economic Freedom Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the Jefferson Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom.

Peter Grier at Christian Science Monitor has a good, brief summary of what would happen if the repeal act was to pass both houses of Congress and become law.

And therein lies the rub: House GOP members have the monumental task of casting themselves as populist warriors in this undertaking, and at the same time somehow convincing constituents back home that Senate Democrats, who have vowed to filibuster attempts to repeal ObamaCare, and told new Speaker of the House John Boehner as much, are out to get them. This is certainly where continued Tea Party efforts and organizing will come into play.

But Organizing for America (OfA) is also already underway with attempts to organize against repeal efforts. Via email from Mitch Stewart:

Their majority is not even a day old, but House Republicans are already getting ready to pass a bill to repeal health reform.

Instead of focusing on the future, they want to put insurance companies back in charge of our health care. To go back to the days when these companies could deny coverage to children based on pre-existing conditions, cancel coverage when people would get sick, or limit the care you could receive — even when you needed more. When seniors would be forced to choose between paying their mortgage and paying for their prescription drugs, simply because they landed in the “donut hole” in coverage.

They want to turn our progress into a partisan fight.

But you and I know that the Affordable Care Act and other reforms to protect consumers did not pass because of a partisan or ideological agenda.

They passed because millions of Americans stood up and said we were ready for commonsense solutions after years of fraud and abuse, for a new era of responsibility after unchecked power. They passed because, after 100 years of debate and negotiation, we said we would wait no longer for health reform.

These reforms passed because of you. Now, we must prepare to stand up for them again.

For my part, I don’t think that legislative repeal of ObamaCare is likely. There simply aren’t enough votes in the Senate for the House GOP measure to clear, and even if it did, President Obama would never sign it into law and reverse course on his administration’s signature legislative achievement. Thankfully though, constitutional challenges to the legislation are making their way through the courts, and the outcome of these will likely play a large role in the future of health care policy.

Take a moment and check out some of my Cato colleagues’ work on ObamaCare, especially this recently-filed amicus curiae brief filed in the Thomas More Law Center v. President of the United States suit.

UPDATE

Michael Chamberlain at Cranky Hermit adds some thoughts about unintended consequences of the law, and Rusty Weiss at Mental Recession sounds off on the CBO’s fuzzy math.