Yesterday, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilbero Hinojosa said,
Two days after Rick Perry said he would turn down billions of federal dollars that would boost our economy and help insure millions of Texans, Congressional Republicans have scheduled their thirty first vote to repeal your health care rights.
Today Republicans like Quico Canseco and Pete Sessions are voting to give lifetime guaranteed government health care to other Members of Congress while they take away health care rights from their constituents. They should be ashamed!
Republicans propose to further hurt sick people by going back to the days when people with pre-existing conditions couldn’t get health care at any price. They propose to hurt our seniors by re-cutting the donut hole in Medicare part D and forcing them to pay more for their prescriptions.
They propose to hurt young people by shoving young adults off their parents’ policies. They care about no one but themselves. They propose to hurt millions of Texans and Americans by reinstating lifetime caps on health benefits—which pretty much assure that a catastrophic disease means you die bankrupt.
The Atlantic: Obamacare Is No Longer So Unpopular:
One of the most accurate polling outfits in the country found this week that President Obama's signature achievement is no longer unpopular with the majority of the country.
The Affordable Care Act, according to a Washington Post/ABC News survey, is now backed by 47 percent of Americans, up from 39 percent in April 2012. Opposition to the law in the wake of the Supreme Court decision upholding it is also down, from 53 to 47 percent.
As well, "just one-third of all Americans favor repealing the legislation in its entirety or in part," a number that's been pretty consistent in these polls since 2010. The Republican-controlled U.S. House yesterday made its 33rd failed attempt to repeal part or all of the law.
Romney has made "repeal and replace" into a campaign mantra, promising to undo the law. But that vow is a promise to his base voters and to partisans rather than an appeal to the majority of the country: "Thirty-eight percent of Americans consider Romney's support for repeal a major reason to vote for him, compared with 29 percent who say it is a major reason to vote against him."
The top-line conclusion The Post put out is that opinion on the law remains deadlocked, which is very much the case. But another way of looking at it is that support or opposition to the law is increasingly partisan, which is what pretty much every survey shows, including the Post's most recent poll.
One of the first bills brought to the floor for a vote after Republicans took over control of the House of Representatives in January 2011 was the repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care (Obamacare) Act of 2010.
When the DBN wrote about that January 19, 2011 vote to repeal Obamacare we included a partial list of health insurance industry reforms that Republicans want to repeal. The list is given here, again, after the "more" jump.