House Speaker Paul Ryan and other fellow Republicans have had very choice words for Obamacare after news broke of an impending double-digit premium hike set for next year.
“The president recently compared Obamacare to a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, and he's right: this disastrous law is blowing up,” Ryan recently joked. “But at least you can return the phone.”
Ryan was referring to President Obama’s recent comments about his signature health care law. While not directly referencing the Note 7, Obama did use an analogy about how when a new smartphone comes out and has bugs in it, companies fix the phone instead of getting rid of smartphones altogether.
“Unless it catches fire, and they just—then they pull it off the market,” he added.
Republicans have seemingly found full unity on something, pouncing on the news that mid-level silver plan premiums under Obamacare would be going up by an average of 25 percent. Everyone from GOP nominee Donald Trump and Speaker Ryan to Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and prominent Trump critic Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) have all taken aim at Obamacare and the president himself, proclaiming the law a failure and a burden to the middle-class.
Trump emphatically claimed that Obamacare was “over” at a rally in Florida, while also claiming his opponent, Hillary Clinton, “wants to double down and make it more expensive and it's not gonna work. ... Our country can't afford it; you can't afford it.”
Ayotte, in the midst of a tight re-election campaign, tweeted out an ad that blasted her Democratic opponent Maggie Hassan for supporting the law, while also saying she wanted to replace Obamacare.
Sasse didn’t pull his punches either, saying in a statement: “We’ve reached this point because Obamacare is built on the lie that Washington’s bureaucrats are smart enough to plan health care for millions of Americans. At every turn -- whether it’s CO-OPs collapsing, premiums skyrocketing, or big insurers bailing -- the American people have paid the price. More spin won’t solve this -- it’s time for the White House to admit that this law isn’t working.”
The AP was the first to report on a Health and Human Services report that confirmed the premium rate hike for next year, an average increase of 25%. The Obama administration was quick to point out that subsidies are available, but the same report also mentions that 5 to 7 million people don’t qualify for the subsidies.
Earlier in the month, the Obama administration floated the idea of creating a government-run “public option” as a potential solution for Obamacare’s struggles.
If that’s the only “solution” that the Democrats can come up with, it’s no wonder Republicans aren’t holding back in their criticisms at all.
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