Washington, D.C. –U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor calling on President Obama to start over on health care:
“Yesterday, President Obama was asked about the Administration’s latest Obamacare delay.
“And instead of finally explaining to the American people why he believes certain employers should get Obamacare exemptions while the middle class should not well, he just doubled-down again on the same old talking points.
“It was truly disappointing.
“I wish he’d finally agree to work with Republicans on a way to replace Obamacare with bipartisan reforms that could help the middle class and those hurting the most.
“Because this much is now clear: Obamacare is just not working the way the Administration promised. It’s hurting the middle class, it’s eliminating incentives to work in the middle of a jobs crisis. And it will lower overall compensation – things like salaries, wages, and benefits – for the American people with those who earn the least potentially the most negatively impacted of all.
“Obamacare is a law that’s just not fair – and this is especially true for many of those it purports to help.
“And for all of the disruption and pain, it’s a law that will still leave 31 million Americans uninsured at the end of the day. That’s why it’s not surprising when we hear that nearly 90 percent – 9 out of 10 – of the new enrollees in Obamacare exchange plans are actually folks who were already insured. Many of them simply shifting from plans they liked to more-expensive plans the government thinks they should like.
“Which leads so many Americans to ask: What was the point of Obamacare?
“For months, the folks in my state have watched the Administration hand out exemption after exemption to its friends and waiver after waiver to the politically connected.
“And they’re left to think: How is that fair?
“More than a quarter-million Kentuckians received notice last year that their health insurance plans would be cancelled because of Obamacare.
“Kentuckians lost plans they liked and want to keep and many realized they wouldn’t be able to afford new coverage. Or that new plans wouldn’t cover the doctors and hospitals they’d come to know and trust or that massively increased premiums and deductibles would radically alter the ways they lived and worked.
“So while I’m sure the folks who conceived of the law meant well, this much seems clear by now: trying to run folks’ lives from hundreds of miles away is not the way to help. It’s often the way to make things a lot worse.
“Kentuckians are capable of making the decisions that work best for them…for their own medical needs and financial situations.
“I’m sure there’s some think tank report that might disagree. I know there’s no end of well-paid Washington bureaucrats with quote-unquote ‘better ideas.’
“But people do not want Washington’s enlightened judgment ruling over their lives.
“And Obamacare is what you get when you put decisions that belong with the middle class in the hands of the government class.
“You get 2,700 pages of law that lead to 20,000 pages of rules and regulations.
“You get a website that doesn’t work as a symbol of a law that won’t work
“You get a maze of bureaucracies and government contractors with indecipherable acronyms - CMS, CCIIO, CGI, QSSI – that seem to exist to obscure accountability when things go wrong
“You get decisions that are based upon the needs of a political calendar rather than what it will take to get the job done
“And worst of all, you hear stories from Kentuckians like this one – from a woman about to lose her plan who was shopping on the exchange: ‘I can't afford the options that have been made available to me. I make too much money to qualify for any ‘help’ from the ACA but I don't make enough to afford paying double what my premium is now. To get a plan that is ‘comparable’ to what I have now, I will have to pay about $12,000 a year in premiums alone.’
“And you hear stories like the one Rebecca Stewart recently shared with President Obama himself. She told the President that she had to change health-insurance plans even though she liked her old plan – and that she was having ‘a panicked experience’ trying to get consistent answers about whether or not her 10-year-old son would continue being able to see his specialist under Obamacare.
“This just isn’t right. I know the President can’t be unmoved by this.
“So I’m calling on President Obama to move to the center.
“I’m saying that it’s time to start over on health care – to replace Obamacare with real bipartisan reforms that can actually help the people who really need it.
“Because a plan like Obamacare that costs this much, that hurts this many Americans, and that still fails to achieve its principal goal at the end of the day. It just won’t work.”