California is about to mark the one month anniversary of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.
Since it was first enacted by Congress three-and-a-half years ago, my Republican colleagues and I have warned California families that the Affordable Care Act would mean people losing their current health coverage, having to pay more out of pocket for lower quality care, an out-of-control government bureaucracy and rising costs for taxpayers.
Assemblyman Dan Logue
I hate to say, “I told you so,” but this is exactly what Californians have seen with Obamacare.
The problems with Americans having difficulty accessing the website and signing up for a plan have been well documented. But this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Government officials, including those running Covered California, continue to refuse to release information detailing how many people have managed to fully enroll in a health plan. Taxpayers have a right to know this information.
Covered California is not the only out-of-control government bureaucracy. The same IRS officials who targeted people based on their political views or religious faith have the authority under the Affordable Care Act to levy fines against people who they believe are not complying with the law. They have already shown that they will let partisan politics get in the way of fairly administer the law. Do we really trust them when it comes to our health care?
Despite what President Obama said about people being able to keep their existing plans if they like them, this has not been the case in practice. The executive director of Covered California recently said in a media interview that he expects as many as 900,000 Californians who currently purchase their health coverage through the individual market to lose their policies.
A recent media report found that up to three quarters of the 14 million Americans who buy their health coverage on the individual market will see their policies canceled. The Obama Administration has known about this fact since July 2010, yet still continued to tell this tall tale to the American people!
Once consumers finally get through the website maze, they are then faced with the sticker shock of significantly higher costs for health care. Middle class families will incur an estimated 30 percent rate increase in California under Obamacare.
When you look at all the problems people are facing with Obamacare today, I like to draw the analogy that it has turned the American people into pets, our doctors are more like veterinarians and the government has become our master.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. For years, Republicans have put forward a number of common-sense, fiscally-responsible health care reforms to fix the problems in the system. Collectively, these ideas would give patients more affordable and convenient health care choices, without busting the budget or creating a new government bureaucracy.
Going forward on health care reform, I think our leaders in the Obama Administration and Congress would be wise to follow a key principle – politics should play no role in health care.
The people that I talk to want a health care system that is responsive to needs of patients, not a one-size-fits-all mandate imposed by a government health care bureaucrat. Patients and their doctors should be in charge of making health care decisions, not the federal government. Most importantly, we must remove any authority for the IRS over people’s health care.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Washington is going to listen to the people and repeal the Affordable Care Act until millions of Americans have suffered through the consequences of this disastrous, big government health care scheme. Only when you make your voices heard will we get the changes hard-working Californians are demanding.
North State Assemblyman Dan Logue is vice chair of the Assembly Health Committee.