By Congressman Joe Pitts
Guest columnist
This week, I
chaired a hearing with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius
to discuss the President’s budget proposal. Of course, the most pressing issue
that needed to be discussed was implementation of the President’s health care
law, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
I know that
there are some who say that Republicans should accept the law, move on and try
to make it better. I don’t agree. First of all, let’s remember just how we got
the law in the first place.
In 2009, when
the House of Representatives considered health reform, Republican objections
were pretty much ignored. The bill shepherded by Nancy Pelosi was so divisive,
that even with a strong Democratic majority it barely passed the House. There
was pretty much no talk about the importance of bipartisanship and no
Republican votes in support.
That bill
didn’t become law. Instead, the Senate passed a separate bill that never even
moved through the committee process. Democrats stopped working with
Republicans, and negotiated with themselves to push the bill through on
Christmas Eve.
When the
usually liberal state of Massachusetts elected Scott Brown with his promise to
fight the bill, the President decided to push the Senate bill through the House
without correcting the many flaws in that legislation. Again, not a single
Republican voted for that bill.
Now, despite
being completely shut out of the process that created the law, some of my
Democratic colleagues are calling on us to put all our support behind the
implementation. The thing is, the law isn’t at risk of failure because of
Republican opposition and it won’t work if we suddenly decided to support it.
This week,
Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), one of the primary authors of the Senate bill told Sec.
Sebelius that implementation could be a “train wreck.” When even the law’s most
fervent supporters are expressing their doubts, you know it’s bad.
Everywhere I
go, I hear from constituents who are either seeing their premiums rise sharply
or having trouble finding a job because of the law.
For the
hearing this week, I invited Sam Stoltzfus to sit in the audience. Sam owns
Keystone Wood Specialties in Lancaster. For 40 years his company has been
making kitchen cabinets and accessories. For much of that time, he’s provided
quality health insurance. He recently wrote me to say that his premiums
increased by 25 percent this year. This week, he told me that they could go up
50 percent next year.
When I asked
Secretary Sebelius why the President’s budget contained no funding for a provision
that was supposed to help small businesses, she ducked my question. The problem
is that the law intentionally imposes billions of dollars in new costs on
businesses. Even those that already provided insurance, like Sam’s does.
Workers are
finding it tough too. Many are seeing their hours cut to part-time or finding
only part-time jobs available. I heard from one constituent, a recently retired
police officer, who was working four days a week. His employer had to cut him
down to three-and-a-half days because of how the law affected their budget.
Just this
week, a national movie theater chain with locations in our area announced that
some workers would see fewer hours because they are paying so much more to
insure their full-time workers. When I asked the Secretary about whether the
administration was trying to do anything for these workers, she said that
employers had no reason to cut hours due to the law since it wouldn’t be in
effect until next year.
What she
apparently didn’t know is that government bureaucrats in the administration are
using current payrolls and employee hours to determine how the law will affect
employers next year.
I know that
the President and Secretary Sebelius think the law will help workers in the
long-run, but that is blinding them to the fact that it is hurting people right
now. The worst part is that there is no reason to think the law will ever work
as they intend it to. The President promised in 2008 that every American would
save $2,500 a year by the end of his first term. The non-partisan Politifact
already declared that as a “promise broken.”
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