Republicans Accept Obamacare

John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, made it clear yesterday that he is abandoning all efforts to thwart President Obama’s healthcare reform. He is now taking heat from his party, but the law will still go into effect. “’Obamacare’ is the law of the land” declared John Boehner in an interview on ABC, referring to the health care reform bill by its nickname.

When asked whether there would be a push to repeal the law after the congressional election, Boehner answered by saying that “the election changed that.” Nonetheless, the Republican leader later wrote on Twitter that the new healthcare law will “increase costs and threatened jobs” and that “our goal has been and still is total repeal.”*

Any change done to the law, even if agreed on by the House, would be blocked by the Senate and the White House, both still in the hands of Democrats. This will still not prevent House Republicans to symbolically vote on repeals.

Signed into law by President Obama in 2009 after a long struggle in Congress, the reform is most noteworthy for its individual mandate on citizens to purchase health insurance, under penalty of a fine, a measure that will only go into effect by 2014.

This obligation had fueled rage in the American right, furious at the idea that the federal government could force citizens to purchase a product, whatever it may be. But the Supreme Court, in a case put forward by twenty-six states controlled by Republican governors and state congresses, voted in favor of the President, rendering any other judicial process against the law impossible.

The Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney promised, if elected, to sign a decree on the first day of his presidency removing States’ obligation to follow the law. In Congress, Republicans had wished to cut the means of applying the law. The goal of health reform was to offer health insurance to the estimated 32 million American currently uninsured, regardless of their medical history and at an affordable price.

*Editor’s Note: This tweet appears to have been deleted from Boehner’s Twitter account