This week, the administration finally released additional enrollment information for the president’s health care law. While we still don’t know how many people have actually paid their premiums, only 36,250 people in Tennessee chose to enroll in a health insurance plan on the exchange. According to a recent AP estimate, roughly 60,000 Tennesseans lost the health insurance policies they carried before Obamacare because their plans failed to meet the law’s minimum coverage requirements. Because of an administrative delay, state commissioners were permitted to extend plans for one year, but what happens next year?
The intent of the president’s health care law was to lower the cost of health care while expanding access. While these are goals we can all agree on, Obamacare fails to do either of those things.
Regarding coverage expansion, 60,000 Tennesseans were at risk of losing their existing insurance before the administration announced these folks could keep their plans, and it’s possible that many more will lose their coverage when the employer mandate takes effect and these temporary fixes expire. The Congressional Budget Office estimated at the time the law passed that 41 million Americans would gain insurance because of this law. They’ve continually revised and lowered that figure, and now only 25 million people are estimated to gain health insurance through Obamacare, at a cost of $1 trillion. My guess is that, because of how woefully unprepared the system was to accept applications, even fewer will end up gaining coverage.
President Obama also claimed his law would lower the cost of health care, but many Americans are seeing their premiums skyrocket. A study released by the Manhattan Institute in November found that individual market premiums will increase by an average of 41 percent nationwide. In Tennessee, men aged 64 are expected to see their premiums rise 28 percent, while women aged 64 can expect their premiums to rise 36 percent. The math just doesn’t add up. You can’t expect to cover more people and lower the cost for some without raising the cost for others.
Even more alarming, for the law to be successful in lowering costs for those who are elderly or sick, young, healthy people must enroll in the exchange to help subsidize those costs. According to the HHS data released on Monday, only 24 percent of the 2.2 million people who have enrolled in Obamacare were in the 18-to-34 age range. 489,460 young enrollees is a far cry from the president’s goal of 2.7 million. Its clear Obamacare isn’t working, but where do we go from here?
In December, President Obama said that he would “work with anybody to implement and improve this law effectively.” He then requested that those with good ideas bring them to him. Well, more than a month ago I joined Reps. Steve Scalise and Marsha Blackburn to once again request a meeting with the president to discuss our ideas for health care reform. The president claims that the only alternative that critics of his health law have is returning to the status quo, but that’s just not true.
As of Tuesday, 35 days later, we still hadn’t heard back from the White House, so we followed up with our request. Our bill, the American Health Care Reform Act, has 120 cosponsors – a majority of House Republicans—and we are open to ideas and amendments from our Democratic colleagues. Health care should not be a partisan issue—as a doctor, I’ve never seen a Republican or Democrat heart attack in my life. It’s essential we get health care reform right, and that means we must work together. I’m ready to work with the president to right the wrongs of Obamacare. If he’s really serious about keeping his word and sitting down with anyone with ideas then he needs to answer our request. We’ll be waiting.
Feel free to contact my office if we can be of assistance to you or your family.
