Two years after President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, conservatives say that law is filled with failed promises.
For instance, critics say the notion that Americans have the option to stick with their health-care plans has proven false.
According to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office, up to 20 million people could actually lose their employer-provided health insurance.
“The whole idea that there’s not going to be this disruption is just untrue. A lot of employers are going to drop their health-insurance coverage to dump people on government-run exchanges to get them off their neck,” Philip Klein, senior editorial writer for The Washington Examiner, told CBN News.
Conservatives argue that such an occurrence will force Americans to switch to a more government-controlled health-care plan and violate individual freedom of choice.
“The new health-care law increases the role of government in every corner of the health-care system,” Kathryn Nix, a policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, told CBN News.
“It inserts itself into the decisions that Americans make regarding the health-care plans they carry. It will also impact the decisions we make with our doctor,” she warned.
Higher Premiums
GOP critics noted that when the president pitched his health-care reform, he said it would cut the cost of the typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.
But the new CBO report says those health-insurance premiums are actually expected to increase by up to 10 to 13 percent.
“The cost is only going to grow and we can’t afford this,” Nix said. “The taxpayers can’t afford it; American families struggling already to pay health-care costs can’t afford it.”
Critics point to yet another broken promise: The CBO estimates the cost of ObamaCare will actually double and will cost taxpayers up to $2 trillion from within the decade starting in 2014, when the law begins to really kick in.
“There are at least 15 new tax provisions in the law. And these are definitely going to hit middle-income families despite what the president has promised,” Nix said.
‘A Complete Disaster’
“I think the health-care plan is a complete disaster on every level,” Klein stated. “You’re going to see massive wait times. You’re going to see quality go down. You’re going to see access go down; you’re going see costs go up.”
But supporters of the president’s health plan, like economist Henry Aaron with the Brookings Institution, disagree.
“Most Americans are not going to see any significant changes in their health-insurance arrangements,” he predicted. “I don’t think anybody, either the critics or the advocates of the bill, think it’s a perfect piece of legislation and changes will need to be made.”
Even the Obama administration’s top health-care official has come under fire for not being able to defend the president’s promises—and why a new report shows the national health care law is actually going to add billions of dollars to the deficit.
A grilling Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., at a recent Senate appropriations committee hearing often left Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius at a loss for words.
“So instead of saving $143 billion by this administration’s own figures and budget, we are now adding $54 billion to our deficit in the first 10 years.”
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging the constitutionality of the president’s health care law next week. Justices will hear a full six hours of arguments, the most time allotted for any case in recent history.
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