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While Republicans lambast the cost of implementing health care reform, a new report shows that their efforts to repeal the law have come at a major cost to taxpayers -- to the tune of nearly $50 million. The House of Representatives again voted to repeal President Obama's signature health care law on Wednesday, marking the 33rd time Republicans have attempted to take down the legislation. The 32 previous repeal efforts faltered at the hands of the Democrat-controlled Senate; the latest attempt is unlikely to break that pattern. According to a report by CBS News, these efforts, widely viewed as symbolic political maneuvers, come with a high price tag. CBS' Nancy Cordes reported Wednesday that Republicans' many fruitless attempts at repealing the Affordable Care Act have taken up at least 80 hours of time on the House floor since 2010, amounting to two full work weeks. As the House, according to the Congressional Research Service, costs taxpayers $24 million a week to operate, those two weeks amounted to a total cost of approximately $48 million. The AP relays background on the GOP's repeal efforts: There was never any doubt that Republicans had the votes to pass the repeal in the House on Wednesday - or that it would die in the Senate, where Democrats possessed more than enough strength to block it. That's what happened in January 2011, when the newly installed Republican majority first voted to repeal the law a few days after taking office. In the months since, the GOP has taken repeated further swipes at the law, including votes to deny salaries to any government officials who enforce it, to abolish a board of officials charged with holding down Medicare costs in the future and to repeal a tax on medical devices. With the exception of a few relatively modest changes accepted by the White House, all the rest have died in the Senate. Although Republicans have remained vocal on repeal since the Supre

While Republicans lambast the cost of implementing health care reform, a new report shows that their efforts to repeal the law have come at a major cost to taxpayers -- to the tune of nearly $50 million. The House of Representatives again voted to repeal President Obama's signature health care law on Wednesday, marking the 33rd time Republicans have attempted to take down the legislation. The 32 previous repeal efforts faltered at the hands of the Democrat-controlled Senate; the latest attempt is unlikely to break that pattern. see more http://springhillmedgroup.com/

WASHINGTON -- With the debate over the Affordable Care Act law morphing from a constitutional matter before the Supreme Court to an implementation matter beforestate houses, President Barack Obama and allied Democrats are refiguring their sales pitch. In response to criticisms that the law hamstrings governors, defenders of the president's health care law will be championing a states-rights amendment that already enjoys Republican support. Under current law, states are allowed to opt out of various requirements of the Affordable Care Act by 2017, provided that they meet minimal standards for coverage. The Empowering States to Innovate Act would move that date to 2014. For the Obama White House, the amendment has a number of politically appealing aspects. The most obvious is that it provides an avenue to the type of federalist approach that the Republican Party, and its standard-bearer Mitt Romney, has argued should have been adopted in the first place. More bluntly, the co-sponsor of the amendment, along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), is Sen. Scott Brown, a Massachusetts Republican who happens to share a senior adviser with Romney. When top Obama administration officials were asked how they would go about selling the law in the immediate aftermath of the court's ruling, one of the three provisions they cited was the opt-out amendment. It was equally telling that the president made a point of emphasizing the idea in his post-SCOTUS remarks. "Each state will take the lead in designing their own menu of options, and if states can come up with even better ways of covering more people at the same quality and cost, this law allows them to do that, too," Obama said. "And I've asked Congress to help speed up that process, and give states this flexibility in year one." Perhaps the most obvious signal that the White House sees the amendment as a campaign instrument came in February 2011, when the president declared -- in a bit of prescience with respect to the GOP prim

WASHINGTON -- With the debate over the Affordable Care Act law morphing from a constitutional matter before the Supreme Court to an implementation matter before state houses, President Barack Obama and allied Democrats are refiguring their sales pitch. In response to criticisms that the law hamstrings governors, defenders of the president's health care law will be championing a states-rights amendment that already enjoys Republican support. Under current law, states are allowed to opt out of various requirements of the Affordable Care Act by 2017, provided that they meet minimal standards for coverage. The Empowering States to Innovate Act would move that date to 2014. For the Obama White House, the amendment has a number of politically appealing aspects. The most obvious is that it provides an avenue to the type of federalist approach that the Republican Party, and its standard-bearer Mitt Romney, has argued should have been adopted in the first place. More bluntly, the co-sponsor of the amendment, along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), is Sen. Scott Brown, a Massachusetts Republican who happens to share a senior adviser with Romney. When top Obama administration officials were asked how they would go about selling the law in the immediate aftermath of the court's ruling, one of the three provisions they cited was the opt-out amendment. It was equally telling that the president made a point of emphasizing the idea in his post-SCOTUS remarks. "Each state will take the lead in designing their own menu of options, and if states can come up with even better ways of covering more people at the same quality and cost, this law allows them to do that, too," Obama said. "And I've asked Congress to help speed up that process, and give states this flexibility in year one." Perhaps the most obvious signal that the White House sees the amendment as a campaign instrument came in February 2011, when the president declared -- in a bit of prescience with respect to