The US conservatives who have long opposed the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — have now taken the judicial way to have it repealed. The US House of Representatives on Friday voted to take the first steps that would lead to the repealing of Obamacare. This comes after Thursday's vote in the US Senate on the issue.
Also read: US asks restaurants to display calorie counts on food menus
What is Obamacare?
The Affordable Care Act, which outgoing US President Barack Obama proposed in 2009 and enacted in 2010, looks to provide affordable health insurance to more people in the US, bringing down the number of people without it from the 15 percent at the time of its initial implementation.
Obamacare envisioned this in many ways. For starters, it proposed to bring the healthcare system to those who had no insurance cover and did not receive any from their employers. It also envisioned more youngsters coming into the system as health insurance became mandatory — more youngsters would lessen the overall cost of insurance.
However, it also requires some other steps to be taken that has the business community — possibly including president-elect Donald Trump — riled: Obamacare requires that any business with more than 50 people working with it must mandatorily provide healthcare insurance. The act also bans insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions.
Why is it being repealed?
The typically conservative Republicans, however, see Obamacare as unnecessary intrusion into the operations of businesses, which are then burdened with extra costs. They also claim that the Act promotes unemployment, despite the fact that employment rates actually rose after its implementation.
The Republicans tried to get Obamacare declared unconstitutional, but the US Supreme Court in 2012 ruled otherwise. Then there's the case of insurance costs going up because fewer US citizens opted for Obamacare than anticipated, leading some insurance companies to back out of it.
The current development
On Friday, the US House of Representatives — which is dominated by Republicans — voted 227-198 for a resolution to decide the budget for the 2017 fiscal, which could mean they essentially have the power to make changes to how much outlay is assigned to programmes covered by Obamacare.
It may be noted that while Trump — himself a Republican — had said during his presidential election campaign that he would repeal Obamacare, he has said after the election that he is more inclined towards replacing it with something else.
