Health care reform marks six months since passage

Today marks six months since President Obama signed into law the controversial health care bill.

“With the 6 month anniversary of the enactment of ObamaCare looming, we continue to learn just how counter-productive this disastrous policy really is,” U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., co-chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus, said in a news release. “The bill has accomplished everything the President said it would not. It has resulted in higher health care costs, higher taxes, higher premiums for patients, and made it more difficult for children and seniors to access care.”

Among the changes that take effect today are a ban on “discriminating” against children with pre-existing conditions, a ban on insurance companies “dropping” coverage and children can remain on their parents’ health plans until they turn 26 years old, according to the White House.

“Part of the challenge for families was, is that even as their wages and incomes were flatlining, their costs of everything from college tuition to health care were skyrocketing,” President Obama said Wednesday in Falls Church, Va. “And so what we realized was we had to take some steps to start dealing with these underlying chronic problems that have confronted our economy for a very long time. And health care was one of those issues that we could no longer ignore.

“We couldn’t ignore it because the cost of health care has been escalating faster than just about anything else, and I don’t need to tell you all that,” Obama added. “Even if you have health insurance, you’ve seen your copayments and your premiums skyrocket. Even if you get health care from your employer, that employer’s costs have skyrocketed and they’re starting to pass more and more of those costs onto their employees.”
But, U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., a harsh critic of the administration, says the legislation “unconstitutionally intrudes on Americans’ personal health care decisions, fails to curb rising costs, and adds more to an already skyrocketing debt.”

“Democrats promised ObamaCare would lower costs and protect current health plans, but the opposite is true,” Price said in a statement. “Costs will rise faster than previously forecast and millions of Americans won’t be able to keep the plans they have.

“The costly new mandates Democrats imposed are already pushing up insurance rates,” Price added. “Instead of admitting this specific byproduct of their legislation, the Obama administration has responded by threatening private businesses. Far from decreasing the deficit, realistic projections show this law will push the country even closer to bankruptcy.”