ObamaCare is a national disaster, but it’s Congress’ mess

By Tennessee State House Representative Glen Casada
    ObamaCare has been one of the most legally challenged laws in recent history, with the Supreme Court being called to sort out a number of different issues with the law. The latest case, King v. Burwell, revolves around the IRS potentially paying illegal subsidies to people who bought their premiums on the federal exchange, Healthcare.gov.
    It is more than unfortunate that Congress had to pass the law to find out what was in it, as former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi so eloquently demanded of her congressional colleagues on the floor of the House. Their carelessness has cost patients, health care providers and taxpayers across the country, including here in Tennessee, thousands of dollars. The Court is expected to make its ruling on King v Burwell in the next few months. In all likelihood, the Court will side with the plaintiffs and declare the subsidy payments to be illegal, which means only people enrolling in ObamaCare plans on state exchanges, like Covered California, will be eligible for subsidies. There will undoubtedly be calls for state legislatures across the country to establish their own exchanges and patch ObamaCare up again.
    Why are states being left to fix something Washington attempted to force upon us? Recent history will tell you that state exchanges are more of a poorly thought out theory rather than a practical solution. Several states are under federal investigation from the FBI and other agencies for their failed exchanges. Transitioning an exchange from federally-run to state-run is costly and time consuming. When the transition is finally made, state-run exchanges fail. Many states, like Oregon and Hawaii, are shutting down their exchanges and pushing people back onto Healthcare.gov as their own websites and infrastructure collapse. This is only after spending hundreds of millions of dollars of scarce public resources on these exchanges, all of which have done little more than line the pockets of a few companies setting up the exchanges.
    We are not imagining or predicting these scenarios; they have already happened and will continue to happen if the states don’t stand up for their rights against Washington.

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