Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas
and chairman of the health subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said, “The Affordable Care Act has left the individual market in shambles and has driven insurers away from offering coverage.”
Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, said Republicans did not know how much the latest
version of the bill would cost taxpayers or how many families would lose health coverage.
House Passes Measure to Repeal and Replace the Affordable Care Act -
By THOMAS KAPLAN and ROBERT PEARMAY 4, 2017
The House on Thursday passed a new version of a health care bill to replace the Affordable
Care Act after the first one failed to get enough Republican support in March.
“Obamacare has hijacked the free market and has taken some Americans’ liberties with it,” Representative Doug Collins, Republican of Georgia, said on the floor, adding
that the health law “replaced our doctors with bureaucrats, because that’s what socialized medicine does.”
Mr. Collins said one of the reasons he came to Congress was to “rein in our nation’s bloated, ballooning entitlement system,”
and the repeal bill does that, he said, by rolling back the expansion of Medicaid authorized by the law.
The vote on Thursday, just before House members were to leave for an 11-day recess, shifts the focus over to the Senate, where a number of Republicans have expressed significant concerns over the House plan, including how it would affect states
that expanded Medicaid and whether it would drive up premiums for older people.
