House Launches New Effort to Defund Obamacare

With the return of Congress from its Easter recess comes more efforts to defund Obamacare. The House goes after two funding measures, one dealing with the setting up of state insurance exchanges and the other for school-based health center construction, The Washington Post reported.

The House GOP majority has already passed a bill to kill the President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That measure and the two before the House this week are unlikely to advance as long as Democrats control the Senate and White House, the Post reported.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., called the insurance-exchange bill a “slush fund designed to push the states into doing what the administration wants using financial leverage.” He said eliminating it would save the government more than $14 billion by 2021 the Post reported.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., countered that the GOP said it supports state-based health reform, but then voted “to take away money states need — at a time of enormous pressure for them — to develop their own, unique insurance exchange programs,” according to the Post.