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House Votes To Repeal Affordable Care Act

By Krishnadev Calamur

Published February 3, 2015 at 5:30 PM EST

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, pauses at a news conference before announcing that the House planned to vote Tuesday to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, following a GOP strategy session at Republican National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill in Washington. While the repeal passed 239-186, it's likely to fail in the Senate or be vetoed by the president.

The House voted 239-186 today to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the latest effort by the Republican-controlled chamber to scrap the law.

The measure also would direct panels to come up with a replacement for the healthcare law — though it doesn't provide a timeline on any new legislation or what provisions it may contain.

The House-approved measure likely will be defeated in the Senate, where the GOP has a smaller majority. President Obama has threatened to veto any legislation that rips up his signature achievement.

The Associated Press notes the House has voted more than 50 times in the past two years to repeal the law. What was different about today's vote? NPR's S.V. Date writes in our It's All Politics blog: "What makes today a milestone is that, for the first time, House Republicans plan to vote on whether to actually take health coverage away from millions of Americans who now have it."

Today's vote came after Obama met with 10 Americans that the White House said wrote the president letters about how they benefited from the law.

"It was maybe plausible to be opposed to the Affordable Care Act before it was implemented, but now it is being implemented and it is working," Obama said at the meeting.

But as NPR's Ron Elving notes, though no one expects today's vote to kill the law, "these issues are important to many who voted for Republican candidates in the 2014 election and expect campaign promises to be honored."