Jan. 18--WASHINGTON -- Republicans in the U.S. House have voted 62 times to repeal President Barack Obama's signature health-care reforms.
Two weeks ago, they managed to send a repeal bill to the president's desk. Obama, as expected, promptly vetoed it.
What Republicans have yet to do: Settle on a plan for replacing the health-care system they want to dismantle.
"I think it's time," said U.S. Rep. Phil Roe, a Johnson City, Tennessee, Republican who argues it's important for the GOP to take its vision of health-care reform to the American people.
Roe, a physician, has been knee deep in the health-care debate for so long that he says he knows the minutiae of health-care policy as well as he knows the Pledge of Allegiance.
Roe has been working, as co-chairman of the House Doctors Caucus, to come up with the Republican alternative to Obamacare, which has been the law of the land for going on six years.
The Republicans' repeal-and-replace campaign seemed to be making progress two years ago when Roe helped write and introduced health-care legislation that supporters contended would return decision-making power to patients and their doctor.
It went nowhere.
Last June, Roe filed the bill for a second time. Again, nothing happened. Not even a congressional hearing.
The GOP has been unable to move its own health-care prescription through Congress for a number of reasons, Roe said.
For starters, the Eric Cantor saga.
When he was the House majority leader, the Virginia Republican pushed for passage of a health-reform bill to replace Obamacare. But Cantor lost his bid for re-election in the GOP primary in the summer of 2014. His astounding, no-one-saw-it-coming defeat was a blow to establishment Republicans and left many of them skittish about taking on health-care reform in a volatile election year.
"Some of the political people were afraid that, if you put this (bill) up, then the Democrats will have something to shoot at," Roe said.
Another problem: Many Congress members don't have even the most basic understanding of what is involved in reforming the Obama reforms.
"This is a very complex bill," Roe said. "I've had several members come up and say, 'Phil, I want to work with you on this.' When I spoke to them for a little while, I realized they really didn't even have the fundamental knowledge of what this bill really did."
Educating lawmakers on the fine points of health policy is going to take some time, Roe said.
Regardless, he's ready to get moving.
Roe's bill, called the American Health Care Reform Act, would repeal Obamacare and replace it with a system that eliminates billions in taxes and thousands of pages of regulations and mandates that critics contend are driving up health-care costs.
It also would allow Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines, expand health-savings accounts, bolster state-based high-risk health insurance pools, change medical malpractice laws to limit trial lawyer fees and damages, and prohibit federal funding of abortions.
Roe said he expects the bill to be merged with a similar proposal by U.S. Rep. Tom Price, a Georgia Republican who's also a doctor. The legislation could be ready to go before the appropriate committees by early March, he said.
"I'm ready to show the American people and debate the pros and cons of this bill," Roe said. "There's no perfect bill out there. But what we've got now sure isn't perfect."
Michael Collins is The Commercial Appeal's Washington correspondent. His weekly Tennessee in D.C. column highlights Volunteer State lawmakers, causes and connections. Contact him at 202-408-2711 or michael.collins@jmg.com.
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