WASHINGTON — Republican senators and witnesses criticized the affordability of the ACA on Thursday, claiming the health care plan drives up costs and stifles competition. In a contentious hearing with the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations, witnesses across the health care industry condemned the fiscal impacts of the ACA, also called Obamacare.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said that the ACA harmed the health care market.
“The third-party data system has led to greater consolidation within all sectors of health care industry, medically reducing competition and driving up costs,” Johnson said.
He also criticized the fiscal spending of Medicaid, claiming that the Affordable Care Act cleared the way for high government spending for health care coverage.
“Instead of acknowledging all the damage done by the default design of Obamacare and working in good faith with Republicans to repair it, Democrats simply want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more in their attempt to continue to hide this failure,” Johnson added.
Joel White, President of Council for Affordable Health Coverage, said that the ACA’s consolidation of health care coverage comes at the expense of quality care.
The Council for Affordable Health Coverage advocates for increased competition in the health care market, seeking more options for consumers.
“We are subsidizing inferior coverage through incentives created…Why is this happening? A big reason is that Obamacare drove consolidation and triggered an arms race to consolidate in insurance markets and hospital markets, and that is driving up costs in the market and leaving consumers with fewer choices,” he said.
According to Tarren Bragdon, President and Chief Executive Officer of Foundation for Government Accountability, the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid to able-bodied adults raised taxes for Americans and inhibited access to health care for the “severely disabled.”
He said that allowing adults without disabilities to access Medicaid blocked disabled adults from accessing the same benefits.
“Meanwhile, as that [expansion] happened, 700,000 Americans with intellectual and physical disabilities are stuck on Medicaid, Home and Community waiting lists while Obamacare’s able-bodied adults are always at the front of the line,” he said.
“Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion has left a trail of fiscal destruction. It’s prioritized able-bodied adults over the truly needy, elderly and disabled, and then it rewards money-laundering by states. That’s costly and wrong,” he added.
A conservative public policy think tank that focuses heavily on combating the expansion of Medicaid, the Foundation for Government Accountability has been at the forefront of attacks on the ACA.
Brian Blase, President of conservative think tank Paragon Health Institute said that the ACA sparked an affordability crisis for American taxpayers.
“The Inflation Reduction Act set the Covid credits to expire after 2025, and they should end. Continuing them with exacerbated fraud, increased premiums and health care prices drive out alternative financing arrangements, remove the imperative to perform this failing program, and drive the country into deeper debt,” Blase said.
According to Politico, Blase and the Paragon Health Institute played a critical role in the formation of policies that were adopted into $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts in the GOP’s spending bill.
Wisconsin resident Shana Verstegen, an ACA Marketplace Enrollee and member of MomsRising, an organization that has advocated for women’s health care, said that the growing cost of ACA premiums put a strain on her family’s finances. She said her family hasn’t gone on a vacation in years and had to consider “scaling back” her children’s sports activities.
She said that attacks on the ACA harm American families.
“Families like mine in every state: blue states and everywhere in between, rely on the Affordable Care Act. This is about real families, real kids and real health,” she said.
Verstegen said her family even considered withdrawing from her existing health care plan, but deemed it “too big of a risk.”
“Right now, we’re leaning toward my husband leaving a small business that he loves so that we can have affordable health care,” she said.
First signed into law in 2010, the ACA has long been a target of conservative attacks. Republicans argue that the coverage plan allows for the federal government to exert too much power over the health care system.
During the shutdown, discourse on Obamacare has become a focal point for both parties, as Democrats advocate for the extension of ACA tax credits while Republicans argue that excess spending for the health care plan places a strain on the federal budget.
While Republicans critique the cost of extending Obamacare subsidies, House Democrats like Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries argue that the GOP has no substantial plan to lower health care costs and find an affordable alternative to the ACA.
“Mike Johnson has claimed over the last several weeks that Republicans are the party of health care. That’s a joke,” Jeffries said in a Thursday press conference.
“For several weeks, we were told that Republicans had a health care plan and that Republicans had planned all along to address the ACA issue and the fact that these tax credits for working class Americans, middle class Americans and everyday Americans are about to expire and Republicans can’t be bothered,” he added.
On the Democratic side of the subcommittee, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said that the hearing was a part of a broader effort by Republicans to roll back the protections of the Affordable Care Act and cut spending for health care.
Blumenthal said that GOP-led efforts to cut spending for the ACA are “abhorrent.”
“It is a broad, relentless, calculated campaign to appeal the law that underlies those tax credits and take away health care insurance from millions and millions of Americans who would come to rely on it,” Blumenthal said.
“Republicans are refusing to extend enhanced credits because they hate the ACA more than they care about pain,” he said.
