HOW DID YOUR CONGRESSMAN VOTE ON THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE ACT?

I have an old post that is getting hits. People want to know how their congressman voted.  So I wrote this post.

My congressman is Rob Wittman. Here is the statement he emailed this afternoon.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 4, 2017 CONTACT: DC Press Office (202) 225-4261

Wittman Backs American Health Care Act

WASHINGTON –Congressman Rob Wittman (VA-01) today released the following statement after voting in favor of H.R. 1628, the American Health Care Act.“It is clear the Affordable Care Act is failing and must be fixed. Having reviewed the text of the bill and the Upton and MacArthur Amendments, I believe this legislation does what is necessary to protect individuals with pre-existing conditions, meets the principles for health care reform I laid out several months ago, and puts in place policies that will expand health care choices, increase access to care, and reduce costs. “This is the first step in a multi-step legislative and administrative process that will give individuals and families more control and choice over their health care decisions while increasing flexibility for states to deliver quality, affordable health care options to their residents.” Congressman Rob Wittman represents the 1st District of Virginia. He serves on the House Natural Resources Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, where he is Chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee.

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www.wittman.house.gov

Which Republicans voted against the American Health Care Act? You can find out here (This was a vote to pass H.R. 1628 in the House.) at GovTrack or here (dailycaller.com). All the Democrats voted in lockstep against it.

Here are some descriptions of the bill, the GOP celebration and issues to come with the Senate.

• ObamaCare replacement bill approved in House (foxnews.com)
• What’s Different About This Version Of The Obamacare Reform Bill? (dailycaller.com)
• Trump Gathers GOP Congressmen at WH: ‘Unbelievable Victory When We Get It Through the Senate’ and Cruz: Getting Health Care Bill Out of the Senate ‘Is Not Going to Be Easy’ (breitbart.com)
• Senate won’t vote on House-passed healthcare bill and Obamacare repeal effort stumbles into Senate, plagued by philosophical incoherence (washingtonexaminer.com)
• House Republicans Pass American Health Care Act (freebeacon.com)

I particularly enjoyed the complaint about philosophical incoherence. We got philosophical coherence with Obamacare. Obamacare is failing. Now we are just trying to salvage what we can before Obamacare collapses, and the people who made this mess won’t help to undo it. All they care about is blaming someone else. So the American Health Care Act is more about desperation than philosophy.

We have a choice.

• The low road: We can let the system collapse. The resulting crisis will most likely give the Republican leadership (especially in the Senate) more flexibility in redesigning the system. However, we can rightly doubt that those senators who could have prevented the collapse have our best interests in mind.
• The high road: We can do our best to keep our healthcare system working and make improvements over time.  Those improvements will require us to get it through some very thick skulls (meebots) that government-run charity is too political and too expensive.

Here is how utterly stupid we have become. We have elected leaders who advocate health insurance for preexisting conditions. That is oxymoronic. By definition no insurance company insures against a disaster that has already happened. Because giving someone money to fix a problem that has already happened is charity, insurance for preexisting conditions is more properly called charity. In fact, insurance for preexisting conditions rewards the undesirable behavior of people who could have bought health insurance and chose not to do so.

So far our president and majority of the House Republicans have taken the high road.  The Senate Republicans? Will they take the high road? We can hope for the best, but it is probably not realistic to expect it.