'This law continues to make our economy worse,' Boehner says. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO House votes to repeal 'Obamacare' — again

The House voted again to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care reform law Wednesday, sending a symbolic but powerful GOP message to voters: The Supreme Court may have upheld it, but it’s still a bad law.

All Republicans supported the measure, which passed 244-185. Five Democrats voted in favor of repeal: Reps. Mike Ross of Arkansas, Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell of North Carolina, Dan Boren of Oklahoma, and Jim Matheson of Utah.


Kissell and Matheson voted against repeal the last time the House voted to wipe out the law, in January 2011. The others all voted for repeal both times.

It’s the second time the House has voted to repeal the entire health care law — and the 33rd time House Republicans have voted to repeal, defund or knock down any piece of the law. But like almost all of the other attempts, this measure is certain to die in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

That doesn’t mean Senate Republicans won’t try, though. They may make new attempts to force a vote on repeal — starting with a small business bill, where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has filed a repeal measure as an amendment.

McConnell said this week that he wants the Senate to vote on the repeal bill again. But it’s unclear whether Republicans will really push for a vote in the upper chamber or just pay lip service to repeal. And even if Majority Leader Harry Reid allows the bill to get a vote on the Senate floor, it is certain not to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

The Senate already defeated another measure to repeal the entire health care law last year, shortly after the House’s January 2011 vote to wipe it out.

In the House, Wednesday’s vote is likely to be the last vote on health reform before the August recess.

But with an eye on the November elections, Republicans pledged to keep trying to defeat the law, even after last month’s Supreme Court decision that the law’s individual mandate was constitutional.

“This law continues to make our economy worse and there’s even more resolve to see that it is fully repealed,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). “We’re giving our colleagues in the Senate another chance to heed the will of the American people. And for those who did not support repeal the last time, it’s a chance for our colleagues to reconsider.”

“I think we’ll do a lot more” to advance the repeal effort, said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) “We’re doing more hearings… so that the contrast is drawn, that the American people know who’s fighting for patients and that’s the Republican Party.”

Matheson, who opposed the law in March 2010 but also opposed full repeal last year, said the time has come to get rid of the whole law because it is not reducing costs, even though he supports some provisions of it.

"Plain and simple, the bill is a flawed effort that fails to address the critical issue of rising health costs," he said in a statement. "With the Supreme Court ruling behind us, and as I reflect on my conversations with Utahns, I think about protecting the future of our economy. We must scrap this flawed effort once and for all, start over, and do it right."

The House has not yet voted to repeal the individual mandate, the least popular piece of the law and the centerpiece of the Supreme Court case. Many Republicans were skeptical of voting on the mandate until after the court ruled. It’s unclear now whether the House will hold that vote.

Supporters of the law had hoped that a Supreme Court ruling in their favor would tone down the political fighting over the health law. Instead, Republicans this week quoted heavily from Chief Justice John Robert’s opinion, in which he said it’s not up to the court to decide if the health law is a good idea.

“I believe [that] since the Supreme Court has ruled 5-4, we ought to have another repeal vote, even though admittedly we had one over a year ago,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas). “We should repeal it, we should put everybody on record ... so as people go into the election, we know where the Congress stands on this issue.”

Republicans also pointed to what they called a two-year record of the law’s broken promises.

“Here’s why we’re doing this: If the facts that we now know today about this law were available when this law was being debated, there is no way this would have become law,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee. “It was sold on a number of promises by the president that are now broken promises.”

Democrats blasted Republicans for “wasting” time by scheduling numerous votes against the health law when they could be working on creating jobs.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) quoted Shakespeare on the House floor: “Thou dost protest too much.”

“The chief justice and four other justices of the Supreme Court of our land have upheld the law for health care accessibility for every single American,” she said. “And what do the Republicans do, but come to repeal?”

The arguments for and against the law haven’t changed in the last two-plus years. Republicans said on the House floor that the law that they call “Obamacare” costs too much, doesn’t allow Americans to keep their health insurance, and inserts the government between the patient and doctor.

Democrats followed predictable themes, too. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer appeared at a press conference earlier in the day flanked by patients who said they had already felt the benefits of the law. They accused Republicans of trying to take health benefits away from women, children and the poor, and putting insurance companies in charge of consumers’ health care.

A repeal of the law “means you keep your federal health insurance benefits while you take these patient protections away from the American people,” Pelosi said.

Underscoring the contention over the health law, party leaders couldn’t even agree on how many votes had been cast against the law.

Democrats, trying to shame Republicans into stopping the votes, called it the 31st vote. Republicans, proud of the steadfast opposition to the law, called it the 33rd vote against the legislation.

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 4:02 p.m. on July 11, 2012.