New House passes first anti-Obamacare measure

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — In the first of what is expected to be numerous confrontations between the Obama administration and Congress over the Affordable Care Act this year, the House on Thursday passed a measure that would dilute the effect of Obamacare on employers.
Lawmakers passed a bill by a 252-172 margin that would raise the bar on the number of hours required to be designated a full-time employee under the still-controversial landmark law. Under the measure, a full-time employee must work 40 hours a week to be deemed full time and thus fall under the employer’s requirement that the company provide them health insurance. Twelve Democrats voted with 240 Republicans to pass the measure. Six legislators did not vote.
The ACA currently sets the bar at 30 hours a week for full-time status, and requires employers of more than 50 such workers to provide coverage. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the bill, dubbed H.R. 30 or the Save American Workers Act of 2015, should the new Republican-controlled Senate pass the measure.
The measure is expected to be the first of many disputes between Congress and the president over the health-care bill over the next two years., says Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution specializing in government programs. Obama is likely to exercise his veto powers much more than he has during the first six years of his presidency..
“I would expect almost every one to be a standoff,” Kamarck said. “This is an issue that’s very important to the Republican base.”
Since Obamacare’s passage in 2010, Republican lawmakers have introduced nearly five dozen measures designed to repeal the ACA, with all going down to defeat in what has been a Democratic Senate until now.
With more repeal measures likely on the horizon, plus several other bills designed to gut key provisions of Obamacare, the success rate is not expected to improve even though Republicans now control the Senate. Obama is likely to veto any measure gutting the ACA that gets past Senate Democrats, who appear likely to try and filibuster such legislation.
“Nobody loses. It’s sort of a game but it’s a game that everybody wins because they shore up their political base,” Kamarck said.
If there is to be any significant change in Obamacare this year, it’s likely to come from the judiciary, not the legislative branch of government, she indicated. The Supreme Court is scheduled to decide on a case that challenges federally funded health coverage subsidies in states that have not set up their own exchanges.
The decision could affect nearly three dozen states and essentially undermine the legislation.
“The cruz of the matter is subsidies,” Kamarck said. “I can’t see it surviving very well.”
But if justices uphold subsidies in non-exchange states, the next time a serious challenge to Obamacare wouldn’t come until 2016, she said. Even if Republicans sweep both houses of Congress and the presidency at that time, they’ll still face tough questions on popular provisions of the law.
“They would have to decide what to keep,” she said.