The US House of Representatives has taken the first step toward demolishing President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare.
Republicans passed a budget measure to introduce a bill - which Democrats cannot block - to roll back the law.
But members of both parties in Congress are concerned about a lack of replacement for Obamacare.
The political showdown raises a big question mark over medical coverage for more than 20 million Americans.
The measure passed in the House nearly on a party-line vote, 227-198, delivering a blow to President Obama's legacy a week before he leaves office.
It instructs four committees on Capitol Hill to draft repeal legislation by 27 January.
The Senate passed the resolution by 51-48 on Thursday.
"By taking the first step toward repealing Obamacare, we are closer to giving Americans relief from the problems this law has caused," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement following the vote.
"This resolution gives us the tools we need for a step-by-step approach to fix these problems and put Americans back in control of their health care."
Obamacare has provided healthcare subsidies and medical coverage for millions who are not covered through work.
It has banned insurers from refusing coverage to people who are already ill, and curbed medical charges to the sick and elderly.
But the law has been rocked by rising premiums, large fees and national insurers exiting the marketplaces.
Egged on by Donald Trump, Republicans have vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act but conservatives have not yet agreed on a new plan.
The above map shows, in green, countries that administer some sort of universal health care plan. Most are through compulsory but government-subsidized public insurance plans, such as the UK's National Health Service. Some countries that have socialized and ostensibly universal health care systems but do not actually apply them universally, for example in poverty- and corruption-rife states in Africa or Latin America, are not counted.
What's astonishing is how cleanly the green and grey separate the developed nations from the developing, almost categorically. Nearly the entire developed world is colored, from Europe to the Asian powerhouses to South America's southern cone to the Anglophone states of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The only developed outliers are a few still-troubled Balkan states, the Soviet-style autocracy of Belarus, and the U.S. of A., the richest nation in the world.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
If there was any justice in this life, all their kids and grandkids would get cancer and suffer agonizing deaths. Yes, I mean that.
sorry BSG, you lost me there; I don't wish bad on any children, regardless of who their parents or grandparents are.
Wow.
I try very hard not to ill-wish anyone (and definitely not kids) no matter how much they've angered or hurt me. I'm just superstitious enough that I believe that kind of stuff has a way of boomeranging on people.
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
It's a far more horrible thing to take away people's healthcare and sentence them to death unnecessarily. Sorry! I would wholeheartedly endorse any horrible tragedy that life should visit upon such heartless pieces of shit, including the experience of losing their children and grandchildren to incurable illness. Because why? Because they clearly don't give a shit about anybody but their own. So they're complete fuckwits who shouldn't be in public service and are only there to further their own well being.
Does this sentiment make me horrible in your eyes? Fine then. I've watched people die for lack of healthcare, go bankrupt for lack of healthcare while fighting devastating illness, etc.
I'm fucking angry, and my freedom to fantasize awful miserable heartbreaking torment for the selfish evil fucks who are dismantling child health insurance is all I have. It's not like there is some actual spaghetti monster out there who will grant my wish - but I'm free to vent my anger in wishing it and you're free to judge me an asshole for having passionate feelings about the millions of children who will be seriously harmed by this. If the sacrifice of a few privileged children and grandchildren could actually change it and I had the power to smite them with cancer, i wouldn't think twice. They never think twice about sacrificing other people's children to disease or ignorance or war for their own benefit, that much is clear to me after 46 years' observance.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
If there was any justice in this life, all their kids and grandkids would get cancer and suffer agonizing deaths. Yes, I mean that.
sorry BSG, you lost me there; I don't wish bad on any children, regardless of who their parents or grandparents are.
Wow.
I try very hard not to ill-wish anyone (and definitely not kids) no matter how much they've angered or hurt me. I'm just superstitious enough that I believe that kind of stuff has a way of boomeranging on people.
There's not much more life could do to fuck me over, and all of that came before I ever wished ill on anybody. At my current state of health, I have more days than not that death would be a welcome blessing.
Thanks for the kind thoughts though - sadly karma doesn't work that way and too many people enjoy blessings they don't deserve, and vice versa.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
If the sacrifice of a fewprivilegedchildren and grandchildren could actually change it and I had the power to smite them with cancer, i wouldn't think twice.
FTFY.
They never think twice about sacrificing other people's children to disease or ignorance or war for their own benefit, that much is clear to me after 46 years' observance
And what you're saying you'd do is different, how?
No, these children/grandchildren don't deserve to be sacrificed because their forebearers are assholes; they're just kids. Curse the legislators and politicians all you want, but kids?
