Dive Brief:
- House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said last week that the House will vote on an ObamaCare repeal bill as one of its first acts of 2016. "We're going to keep working to give families relief from this law while we work to dismantle and replace it altogether," he said.
- The legislation has already passed the Senate, as previously reported by Healthcare Dive, and will engage a veto scenario with President Obama - who has 10 days to veto it after it's passed.
- The bill would eliminate key provisions of the ACA, including the individual and employer mandates and defund Planned Parenthood through a budget process called reconciliation.This process can only happen when one party controls both the House and Senate and allows a reconciliation bill to be passed with only 51 votes in the Senate.
Dive Insight:
"When we return in January, the House will put an ObamaCare repeal bill on the floor and pass it and put it on the president's desk," Ryan said. However, according to The Wall Street Journal, Congress and the White House have marked 2016 as a less ambitious legislative year than 2015.
Obama said at a news conference last Friday, "It's an election year, and obviously, a lot of the legislative process is going to be skewed by people looking over their shoulders, worrying about primaries, trying to position themselves relative to the presidential candidates. So that makes it harder. But, I think there are going to be a handful of areas where we can make real progress."