GOP aims for health care repeal, despite pledged veto

WASHINGTON – Republicans ignored a White House promise of a veto Wednesday and pushed toward Senate passage of legislation demolishing President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul and blocking Planned Parenthood’s federal funds.

After weeks of strategizing, GOP leaders began rolling out a measure they said would attract the votes needed for approval by week’s end. To achieve that, they balanced victories for some of the most conservative GOP senators with concessions for more moderate Republicans facing competitive 2016 re-elections.

The White House accused Republicans of “refighting old political battles,” a reference to unanimous GOP opposition to the measure ever since Obama began pushing it through Congress and dozens of votes lawmakers have staged to undo the statute.

Repeal would “roll back coverage gains and would cost millions of hard-working families the security of affordable health coverage they deserve,” the White House wrote in its letter pledging a veto.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tauntingly suggested that Democrats reconsider their defense of the health care law.

“This is their chance, and President Obama’s chance, to begin to make amends for the pain and hurt they’ve caused” by the statute.

The GOP said a veto would only help its presidential and congressional candidates by underscoring that Republican control of the White House and Congress could spell the end of the “Obamacare” law and of Planned Parenthood’s federal dollars.

Pleasing conservatives, the measure would all but kill the 2010 Affordable Care Act, effectively ending its requirements that individuals obtain health insurance and that large companies offer coverage to workers by erasing the financial penalties enforcing those obligations.

The bill would repeal the law’s expanded Medicaid coverage for lower-income people. It would also annul tax increases the law imposed to cover its costs, including levies on medical devices, insurance policies, investment income of higher-earning people and tanning salons, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

For GOP senators facing re-election fights, the measure offers relief: a two-year delay in its repeal of the exchange subsidies and Medicaid expansion. That would allow Republicans to argue the bill creates a two-year bridge until the next president takes office and can offer a replacement plan.