Republican: New U.S. House will go after Obama's health care bill

An incoming House committee chairman said today that the new Republican majority will probably move this month to repeal President Obama's health care bill, setting up a major political battle over the president's major domestic initiative.

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, agreed that the Senate is unlikely to follow suit, and Obama would doubtless veto any repeal effort. But he said Republicans would then seek to block various aspects of the law, including the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance.

"We're going to go after this bill piece by piece," Upton said on Fox News Sunday, later adding: "We will look at these individual pieces to see if we can't have the thing crumble."

Upton said a general repeal vote by the House will probably take place before the president's State of the Union address, which is expected to be in late January.

The health care law is also under challenge in federal court.

White House officials predicted that Americans will oppose Republican efforts to repeal the health care law, saying many of its provisions are popular, particularly new restrictions on the insurance industry.

Spokesman Robert Gibbs recently cited a new law that prevents health insurance companies from denying coverage to people who are sick, or have pre-existing conditions.

"Passage of the bill was a very important thing for the American people," Gibbs said, citing "millions of families whose children no longer have to lay awake at night wondering if their children can be covered by health insurance because they have a preexisting condition. That's been wiped away."

Gibb added: "If Republicans want to re-institute insurance companies making those decisions on behalf of parents, that's an argument that they can try to make. I don't think it will be a very successful one."

(Posted by David Jackson)