U.S. House Repeals Health Care Overhaul

The U.S. House of Representatives just voted to repeal President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul. Representative Don Young joined his entire party in the vote.

This was the 31st vote in the House to repeal the Affordable Care Act and it is one Republican leaders did not expect to take. After the U.S. Supreme Court mostly upheld the law, leaders scrambled to schedule this latest repeal bill.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s ruling labeled the so-called individual mandate that requires people to buy insurance or pay a fee as a tax and that tax has become a major talking point both at the Capitol and on the campaign trail.

Representative Young, who joined all of his Republican colleagues and a handful of Democrats in voting against the measure, called it just that.

“Healthcare is a tax. And we have a president who ran on “no new taxes.” Well that tax is going to hit everybody, to the point where it costs us billions of dollars – and they get worse healthcare,” Young said.

Republicans contend there are dozens of new taxes in the bill, though the individual mandate remains the most controversial. Democrats counter the law would save billions of dollars in the long run.