Friday: House votes on ‘like it, keep it’ ObamaCare bill

The House starts at 9 a.m., and by lunchtime, it will likely pass a bill that would let people keep their health insurance plan, if they like it.

Members will call up the Keep Your Health Plan Act, and it should pass on the strength of GOP votes — the only real question is how many Democrats will support it.

{mosads}Democrats have grown increasingly antsy about the millions of people who have been told their insurance plans will be canceled due to new standards in ObamaCare, and the many who have been told they would need to buy a more expensive plan.

The canceled plans, the pending House vote and growing Democratic support for a legislative fix crashed into the White House on Thursday, forcing President Obama to admit that he fumbled the ObamaCare rollout, and leaving some historians to wonder if they’d ever seen a presidential press conference quite like that before.

Obama proposed an administrative fix: a letter to state insurers saying they could allow current plans to be offered for another year and maybe longer.

But that led to more criticism and complaints from insurance regulators that it would not be easy to simply recreate the plans they spent years getting ready to shelve. Republicans and many Democrats added that a legislative fix would still be needed.

The House will start by debating and voting on the rule for the Keep Your Health Plan Act, H.R. 3350. After an hourlong debate on the bill, House Democrats are expected to put forward their own legislation to fix the problem, but this is likely to be turned away in a party-line procedural vote.

Then the House votes, and it’s done for the week.

The Senate is out today and returns Monday. But the House vote has implications for the Senate, where six Democrats are supporting a bill that is also aimed at letting people keep their current health plan.

The sponsor of that Senate bill, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), said Thursday that she would continue to press for passage of her bill.

Late Thursday night, the Obama administration said the President would veto the House bill if it were presented for his signature.