House Republicans are already pushing back against a healthcare speech President Obama is slated to deliver in Tampa, Fla. next Wednesday.
Obama is expected to celebrate the third anniversary of the Obamacare rollout in his policy remarks. But House Budget Chairman Tom Price, speaking on behalf of the GOP in the party’s weekly address on Saturday, said the law has given Americans little to commemorate.
“Ever since President Obama and a Democrat-led Congress passed Obamacare six years ago, the law’s failures have been piling up. You know the stories. Premiums and deductibles going through the roof. Patients losing their doctors. Millions of people getting insurance cancellation notices in the mail. Some of the more recent fallout has been the near total collapse of the Obamacare co-ops,” Price said in his prebuttal.
In addition, the 17 of the 23 nonprofit health insurers that were set up to provide people with additional insurance options have failed and left customers stranded.
“The same law that encouraged people to sign up for these doomed co-ops — and did nothing while they imploded — is now penalizing folks who lost their coverage. This is ridiculous, and the American people should not have to put up with it,” Price added.
The physician-turned-politician said “after all the harm” Obamacare has caused, President Obama and congressional Democrats ought to support the CO-OP Consumer Protection Act (H.R. 954). The bill was sponsored by Ways and Means Member Adrian Smith, R-Neb., and would exempt those who have lost coverage through the co-ops from the individual mandate.
H.R. 954 passed through the House earlier this week and moves on to the Senate for consideration.
