On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a repeal of President Barack Obama’s health care reform bill by a margin of 245-189. And although it can be viewed as the start of getting the entire measure repealed, many critics say it won’t go anywhere because it has no chance of making it through the Senate, or beyond a presidential veto.
However, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume insists the move by the House isn’t completely meaningless. Although legislatively it is a miss, it does have political significance.
“That House vote to repeal Obamacare will have little legislative effects since there is virtually no chance the repeal will become law,” Hume said. “But, it will have political significance as a demonstration to the continuing resistance to the program. The repeal passed the House by far larger margin than the bill itself did when it was rammed through last March. In a sense it becomes a race against time.”
That race against time, as he explained, is one that will have to show progress made in dealing with the legislation before people adapt and it becomes a third-rail issue.
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“That’s because once a sweeping set of government policies is put in place, Americans begin to adapt. They come to depend on whatever benefits the program provides, and they learn to live with burdens that it imposes. Businesses factor in the reality of their plan and change procedures accordingly. Once that process is completed, it is more difficult to undo the law. It may have been highly disruptive when it passed, but after a while repealing it becomes disruptive as well. And with billions in insurance subsidiaries flowing to millions of people, Obamacare could become politically untouchable, but it will be years before Obamacare is fully in effect. By that time, it should be clear that the bill does almost nothing to reduce the cost of health care, plus the mandate forcing everyone to buy health insurance, whether they want it or not, could make the measure more unpopular than it is now. And there is no uncertainty that mandate will be upheld by the courts. So in short, it’s clear time is a factor in this struggle but not so clear whose side time is on,” he said.
In the end, he admitted the bill will change the American health care system, but does nothing to “bend the cost curve.”
“I think we will be legislating this issue of health care and health care reform for years to come as partly because the bill does nothing to address the cost question,” he added. “And my sense is that when it’s all said and done, we will have a health care system that doesn’t look like the old one, but doesn’t look very much like this one either.”