Unintended Consequences of Obamacare Continue to Pile Up

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer half a cheer for the recent news that the benchmark price for a ``silver'' level ObamaCare plan will drop very slightly in FY 2015. Why only half a cheer? As economics writer Megan McCardle recently noted:

Contrary to optimistic early reports, that doesn't mean that everyone's costs are falling. Consumers will have to be attentive to make sure that their costs don't go up. The worse news: we won't actually know what effect the Affordable Care Act is having on insurance prices until 2017, when a bunch of temporary subsidies for insurers expire.

She goes on to note that the various ``risk corridors'' and other incentives which the Obama administration created to get insurers to participate in ObamaCare are preventing us from knowing the real cost of the President's disastrous health care law. McCardle writes:

Right now, it's just not very risky for insurers to write a policy that loses a bunch of money because your losses are capped at a few percent. Starting in 2017, all that changes. Insurers are going to need to price policies with the expectation of making money and the fear of losing it.

Mr. Speaker, I will pause for a moment to note that socialized losses combined with private profits are a hallmark of the crony capitalism of the ObamaCare era. Sadly, even in these heavily subsidized years, Americans are still suffering from price shock on their health insurance plan. As a constituent recently wrote to me:

Virginia, here we go again. I just received a letter from my health insurance carrier that my policy will no longer be available after December 31, 2014, due to not being ACA compliant. I will now be looking at $600-a-month premiums as I am not eligible for a subsidy because I could go on my wife's policy for $650 a month. $600 would be over 20 percent of my take-home pay. We need your help to keep our current plan as promised or change the ACA.

ObamaCare's problems extend beyond high prices. I recently received a letter from a constituent--a middle-aged woman recovering from breast cancer--who was simultaneously dealing with the consequences of ObamaCare and the Obama economy.

In 2013, I was laid off from a job I had for almost 8 years. I opened a business instead of drawing unemployment. This year, the building I was leasing was sold and the new owners would not let me stay. My life savings went into building this and now it was gone. No money to start over about the same time I find I had breast cancer. I had tried to sign up for ObamaCare months before, but because my husband and I file our taxes separately, I did not qualify for subsidies regardless of my income. So here I am, no insurance, no income, with breast cancer. I do not qualify for disability because I don't expect to be disabled for at least 12 months. I do not qualify for Medicaid because of the guidelines for that.

I have paid my taxes and worked hard all my life and my government does not care about that.

Is this messed up or what?

Mr. Speaker, the law is messed up. The unintended consequences of ObamaCare continue to pile up for hardworking Americans across the country. When will this administration learn that it does not have the knowledge or ability to effectively, efficiently, and fairly manage the economic and health care choices of over 300 million Americans from Washington?

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