McConnell: On Obamacare: 'Divide Between The White House And Reality Can Be Stark'

Today in Washington, D.C.:
The House convened at Noon today.

Bills that may be considered:
H.R. 2088 — "To amend the United States Grain Standards Act to improve inspection services performed at export elevators at export port locations, to reauthorize certain authorities of the Secretary of Agriculture under such Act, and for other purposes."
H.R. 2394 — "To reauthorize the National Forest Foundation Act, and for other purposes.
H.R. 2289 — "To reauthorize the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to better protect futures customers, to provide end-users with market certainty, to make basic reforms to ensure transparency and accountability at the Commission, to help farmers, ranchers, and end-users manage risks, to help keep consumer costs low, and for other purposes."
H.R. 889 — "To amend chapter 97 of title 28, United States Code, to clarify the exception to foreign sovereign immunity set forth in section 1605(a)(3) of such title."

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today urged the House of Representatives to adopt an amendment to the Transportation and HUD appropriations bill Rep. Paul Gosar plans to offer (R-AZ) defunding implementation of the "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" rule and the "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Assessment Tool," which when finalized will empower the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to condition eligibility for community development block grants on redrawing zoning maps to achieve racial and income integration: "Rep. Paul Gosar's amendment to the Transportation HUD appropriations bill would end an unwarranted intrusion into the local zoning process by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In Obama's America, taking a community development block grant puts a city's long thought out zoning plan at risk. Those governments that take any portion of those grants must redraw neighborhoods along federal racial and income standards, while residents remain unaware and disenfranchised.

"This is not about low-income housing, it is about federalism and an attempt by the social engineers in Washington, D.C. to impose their will upon over the voice of those most impacted by their arbitrary decisions. Rep. Gosar's stand for local communities against the tide of Obama's federal know-it-allism is a refreshing cool breeze in an otherwise stagnant Congress."

The Senate reconvened at 10 AM today. Following an hour of morning business, the Senate resumed consideration of H.R. 1735, the Fiscal Year 2016 Defense Authorization bill.

At 3 PM, the Senate will vote on an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill offered by Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI) that would prohibit any money being returned to defense accounts unless non-defense spending is increased.

In the days leading up to another key Supreme Court decision about his unpopular health care law, President Obama has been again attempting to promote Obamacare and claim it has been successful, while dismissing all of the commonsense criticism of the law.

Asked by a reporter about it at the G7 Summit yesterday, President Obama asserted, “What’s more, the thing is working.  I mean, part of what’s bizarre about this whole thing is we haven’t had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them come to pass.  You got 16 million people who’ve gotten health insurance.  The overwhelming majority of them are satisfied with the health insurance.  It hasn’t had an adverse effect on people who already had health insurance. . . . The costs have come in substantially lower than even our estimates about how much it would cost. . . . None of the predictions about how this wouldn’t work have come to pass.”

As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor this morning, “Sometimes, the divide between the White House and reality can be stark.

“That was on evident display yesterday, when President Obama told us that Obamacare was ‘working’ and that essentially ‘none’ of the warnings of the law’s failures and broken promises had come to pass.

“I imagine the families threatened with double-digit premium increases would beg to differ, as would the millions of families who received cancellation notices for the plans they had and wanted to keep. “That’s especially true considering something else the President said — that Obamacare ‘hasn’t had an adverse effect on people who already had health insurance.’ President Obama actually said that. It may border on the absurd, but he said it.”

The reality, of course, is that many of the state exchanges are struggling, premiums are rising substantially, easily predictable bureaucratic snafus are affecting many health care consumers, and Americans had plans they liked cancelled.

Last month, The Washington Post reported, “Nearly half of the 17 insurance marketplaces set up by the states and the District under President Obama's health law are struggling financially, presenting state officials with an unexpected and serious challenge five years after the passage of the landmark Affordable Care Act. Many of the online exchanges are wrestling with surging costs, especially for balky technology and expensive customer-call centers — and tepid enrollment numbers.”

Just yesterday, Hawaii’s Democrat governor was forced to shut down his state’s struggling Obamacare exchange. And, as Fox News noted, “Hawaii is not the only ObamaCare exchange to be plagued by troubles. Despite the government investing $4.5 billion into state-run exchanges, Oregon, Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, New Mexico and Nevada have also shut down their operations.”

Meanwhile, it was just last week that the familiar stories of health insurers seeking massive rate increases returned. CNN wrote, “Hold onto your wallets ... many insurers want to substantially hike rates on Obamacare policies for 2016. Many are proposing double-digit premium increases for individual policies, with some companies looking to boost rates more than 60%, according to a list posted . . . by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.”

The latest reports add New Jersey to the list of states where premiums are expected to go up. According to the Star Ledger, “Several of the health insurance policies to be offered to New Jersey residents during the third year of the Affordable Care Act will come with premium hikes of more than 10 percent, according to the federal government. . . . Horizon Healthcare Services, Inc. has requested an average increase of 10.81 percent for two of its Advantage EPO plans. A third plan, the so-called catastrophic plan, which covers about two percent of Horizon's exchange enrollment, has a proposed price increase of 14.4 percent. In all, 86,000 customers would have to pay more, according to the company's rate memorandum. . . . Oxford Health Plans (part of UnitedHealthcare) has requested a average price increase of 15.65 percent for policies in its IP HOM product line, according to its filing with the federal government. Within that product line, increases range from 0.8 percent to 24.2 percent, affecting about 6,000 customers.”

Then there was the “Nasty tax surprise for Obamacare customers” that CNBC noted at tax time this year. “Half of the households that received federal subsidies to help pay for their health insurance in 2014 will have to repay some money back to the government when they file their tax returns . . . ,” CNBC reported.

A month earlier, it was reported that “The administration sent incorrect tax information to 800,000 people who have enrolled in health insurance through ObamaCare . . . .”

And who can forget the debacle that was the launch of the federal Obamacare website in 2013?

The people who did sign up for Obamacare plans quickly found that many of them couldn’t keep their doctors due to narrower networks and were faced with massive deductibles, sometimes in excess of $10,000.

And then there was 2013’s “Lie of the Year,” President Obama’s pledge that “[i]f you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” CBS News wrote at the time, “A CBS News analysis found that nearly 5 million Americans will lose their current health plan due to Obamacare.”

As for costs, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ actuarial office found last fall, “By 2023 federal, state, and local government financing is projected to account for 48 percent of national health expenditures, up from 44 percent in 2012, and to reach a total of $2.5 trillion.” And “[t]he combined effects of the Affordable Care Act's coverage expansions, faster economic growth, and population aging are expected to fuel health spending growth this year and thereafter (5.6 percent in 2014 and 6.0 percent per year for 2015–23).”

All this doesn’t even get into Obamacare’s negative effects on hospitals and the economy. Senate Leader McConnell explained some of what’s happened to the Bluegrass State because of the president’s unpopular health care law in an op-ed yesterday: “A recent report published by the Kentucky Hospital Association (KHA) showed that Obamacare's multi-billion dollar attack on hospitals throughout my state is expected to result in a net loss of $1 billion over the next few years. That's a $1 billion loss to hospitals that are oftentimes drivers of the local economy. Incredibly, this report shows that Kentucky hospitals are expected to lose more money under Obamacare than they're expected to gain in new revenue from the law's expanded health care coverage. That's partly because Obamacare cut Medicare by more than $700 billion to pay for this new entitlement. . . .

“So how are Kentucky hospitals reacting to this devastating news of lost funding despite coverage expansion? By cutting jobs, reducing or freezing wages, eliminating services, or in some instances, closing down altogether. In large part due to Obamacare, two-thirds of Kentucky hospitals have eliminated positions through layoffs, attrition or abolishing positions. That's more than a 10 percent reduction in the statewide hospital workforce from 2013—a major loss of jobs on top of the other well-known consequences of Obamacare.”

As he said today, “It’s also another example of a law that’s failed. And the sooner President Obama can get to grips with that reality, the sooner we can work together to replace the fear and anguish of Obamacare with the hope and promise of true health reform.”

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