(Story updated at 6:03 p.m. ET.)
Republicans in Congress have achieved their longtime goal of sending a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act to President Barack Obama, who is certain to veto it.
The House Wednesday evening passed the bill 240-181, with representatives almost entirely voting along party lines.
Obama will have 10 days (excluding Sundays) to veto the bill.
House Speaker Paul Ryan has said his chamber will vote to override the expected veto later this month, but Republicans do not appear to have enough support in both the House and Senate to succeed. Ryan has also said the GOP will put forth a plan for replacing the ACA, but did not offer specifics.
The bill's passage is symbolic for Republicans, who have previously voted 62 times on ACA repeals that could not pass both chambers. Wednesday's vote will allow many Republicans to fill a campaign promise and could offer a glimpse of how healthcare could be managed if a Republican wins the White House in November.
“House Republicans are starting 2016 unified in opposition to this law and focused on putting together a patient-centered alternative that grants Americans freedom in their health care choices,” Ryan said in a statement.
The law needed final approval in the House because it was tweaked in the Senate, which used the budget reconciliation process to push the bill through with only a simple majority vote.
It would zero out the penalties for not buying health insurance and eventually scrap the law's Medicaid expansion and premium subsidies. It would also suspend federal money to Planned Parenthood for a year.
A perennial target of conservatives, the group came under intensified GOP pressure last year over providing fetal tissue for research.
Planned Parenthood officials and Democratic lawmakers accused Republicans of attacking women's health. Republicans, in turn, took to the House floor to critique Planned Parenthood in graphic terms, accusing the group of killing babies.
The ACA took a hit recently when the yearend omnibus agreement included a delay of the Cadillac tax on high-end insurance plans and the annual tax on insurance providers while also suspending the medical-device tax. Most observers doubt that any of these taxes will ever be reinstated in their current form.
