Washington, D.C. – In a speech on the Senate floor today, U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., highlighted 10 provisions in the majority’s health care bills that would drive up health care costs for American families.
“This health care plan being forced on America under phony, tight timelines bites off too much, fails to deliver on promises and passes the costs on to hardworking Americans,” Enzi said.
“We need to enact reforms that will actually reduce costs and make health insurance more affordable. That is what the American people want, but unfortunately, that is not what the current bills actually do.”
“This health care plan being forced on America under phony, tight timelines bites off too much, fails to deliver on promises and passes the costs on to hardworking Americans,” Enzi said.
“We need to enact reforms that will actually reduce costs and make health insurance more affordable. That is what the American people want, but unfortunately, that is not what the current bills actually do.”
Top 10 ways the Senate Democrats’ bills would drive up health insurance costs:
1. Requires young people to pay higher premiums – Studies show the restrictive new rating rules would increase premiums for young people by 69 percent.
2. Forces everyone to purchase costly plans – Requiring everyone to purchase expensive health care plans with high premiums – and not allowing people to choose affordable options that meet their budgets and needs – would increase premiums for new individual purchasers by nearly 10 percent.
3. Piles on federal mandates – Forcing everyone to purchase a plan that covers a laundry list of benefits, regardless of what they want or need, would inevitably drive up everyone’s costs.
4. Taxes medical devices – Nonpartisan experts at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have concluded that new excise taxes on medical devices would be passed onto patients, increasing premiums and increasing prices on everything from wheelchairs to pacemakers.
5. Taxes drugs – Patients would pay for these taxes too, in the form of higher prices on life-saving prescription drugs and higher premiums.
6. Taxes insurance providers – CBO says new taxes on insurance providers would be passed onto patients in the form of higher premiums, as much as $487 per year for families.
7. Expands Medicaid and shifts costs – The bills would force 14 million Americans into the flawed Medicaid program, which 4 in 10 doctors won’t accept because the program underpays providers. Studies show that expanding the program directly increases costs for everyone else, since doctors and hospitals must make up for their losses under Medicaid by shifting costs to other patients.
8. Taxes “Cadillac” and union plans – The new 40 percent tax on high-end “Cadillac” plans would force companies to shift costs to employees or to reduce the value of the health care benefits they provide.
9. Charges fee to sell plans in the mandated exchanges – CBO estimates that the surcharges to sell plans in the new exchanges would increase premiums by approximately three percent.
10. Imposes a new tax to pay for comparative effectiveness research – The bill would tax patients to pay for new research so that Washington bureaucrats can decide which treatments patients can and cannot receive.
Click here to read the full floor statement.
Click here to read the full floor statement.
