Billy Long: I will continue to stand against the Affordable Care Act

(From Seventh District Congressman Billy Long)

March 23 was the eleven-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which most folks refer to as Obamacare. While I've always supported certain aspects of it such as guaranteeing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and allowing children to stay on their parent's insurance policy until they turn 26 years old, we can do better. 

We would be better served to replace the current law with legislation that still provides protections for people with pre-existing conditions but actually works for the American people and our healthcare system. You hear regularly that Obamacare is broken, but what exactly is broken about it? Please allow me to break it down here.

 

Obamacare on average more than doubled the cost of individual market health insurance – you heard that right, it doubled people's cost at a minimum. In 2013, the average premiums paid in the individual marketplace was $244, by 2019 average premiums had increased by 129% to $558. In the meantime, during that same period premiums for plans on large-group employer markets increased by an average of 29%. 

This is a stark contrast that shows that purchasing health insurance on public exchanges is proving to be more costly than Democrats expected when they passed Obamacare on a party-line vote with a promise that costs would actually go down. 

When looking at Missouri, these numbers are even worse. From 2013 to 2019, the average premium paid on the individual market increased from $197 to $595, an increase of 202%. The reality is that these stark increases in premiums are forcing people to put more and more money towards their health insurance every year, taking away from other expenses and bills. 

It's written into the law that Senators and Congressmen are required to buy Obamacare and not allowed to purchase the group insurance that every other government employee buys. 

So I know firsthand how much the cost of coverage has escalated. 

Many Americans received a reduction in taxes when President Trump signed his signature tax cuts into law but that same year most all of them saw their Obamacare premium escalated more than their tax savings. You read that right. It is simply unacceptable that Missourians have seen our insurance premiums triple.

If a drastic increase in premiums wasn't enough, how about the little-known nightmare that is the navigator program. When Obamacare was passed, there was $100 million included in its budget for “navigators." 

Navigators were tasked with helping people sign up on the public marketplace. Another caveat is that the navigators hired to help you could have no nexus to the insurance industry. Translation: if you're knowledgeable about health insurance, you need not apply - we're looking for rank amateurs here. In essence, people were hired to explain insurance plans to you that had no previous knowledge about health insurance coverage. 

This program has proven to be ineffective and wasteful, and the funding for this program is taken from fees the government takes from insurers participating in the exchange. In 2016, 17 navigators enrolled 100 people each. The average cost per enrollee was $5,000. One navigator received $200,000 from the federal government and successfully enrolled a grand total of one individual.

When navigators received funds, they were given goals they were supposed to meet. It turns out that a whopping 78% of navigators were not able to meet their enrollment goals, despite receiving over $50 million. In fact, navigators enrolled less than one percent of enrollees. 

Despite the navigator program’s failure, liberal groups are still promoting it as a way to enroll individuals in Obamacare. Their solution is to throw $100 million more to navigators because apparently $5,000 per enrollee is a good use of federal dollars.

I have supported various efforts to replace Obamacare with a more patient-friendly system, unfortunately, these efforts never came to fruition and we are still stuck with a corrupt and broken healthcare system. 

Americans desperately need their premiums to be competitive with private or employer health insurance plans and right now, that just is not the case. We need to stop waste within Obamacare by completely ending funding for programs such as the navigator program. 

Left-leaning groups that are friends of the White House and Congressional Democrats shouldn’t be rewarded with taxpayer dollars for their failure to enroll people in health insurance plans. Ultimately, the navigator program has proven to be a slush fund to dole out taxpayer dollars to liberal groups.

Obamacare is broken and needs to be replaced. We need to work towards building a healthcare system that is fair for doctors and patients and is more competitive. Premiums need to be reduced and corruption needs to come to an end. I will continue to stand up against the ACA and support replacing this flawed legislation. A 202% average increase in premiums for Missourians is unacceptable and I will continue to push for reform.