GOP Address: Sen. John Barrasso Seeks Health Care Law Repeal
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United States Senate(WASHINGTON) — In the days since the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday to uphold President Obama’s health care law, both Republicans in Congress and the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, have vowed to repeal it. In this week’s Republican address, Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso joins his party’s call for repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
Calling the law a “failed policy that won’t lower the cost of health care in America,” Barrasso says the president promised that his health care plan would not raise taxes on American families. But Barrasso says President Obama has broken his promise.
“On Thursday, I was in the courtroom as the Supreme Court ruled that the President’s health care law is what the president claimed is was not: a new tax.
On Friday, White House officials insisted that the individual mandate in the president’s health care bill is a “penalty,” not a tax, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the law under Congress’ taxing power.
“For those who can afford health insurance but choose to remain uninsured, forcing the rest of us to pay for their care, a penalty is administered as part of the Affordable Care Act,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Friday.
Still the individual mandate is just one of the president’s “many broken promises,” according to Barrasso.
“He promised lower health care costs, but they keep going up. He promised lower insurance premiums, but they’ve increased $2,400 a family over the past three years. He promised the law would create jobs, but the Congressional Budget Office projects that 800,000 fewer people will have jobs because of this law. He promised it wouldn’t add a dime to the deficit, but the law calls for trillions of dollars in new spending that Americans don’t want,” he says of President Obama’s health plan.
Barrasso added that President Obama also promised to protect Medicare, “but instead he raided $500 billion from our seniors on Medicare — not to strengthen Medicare — but to start a whole new government program for someone else.”
The senator says that repealing the law and replacing it with “real health care reform” is what will “make sure that our heath care system is truly patient-centered, not government-centered.”
“Once we have repealed the law, we will tackle the serious problems that plagued our health care system and are now getting worse,” Barrasso says. “We will replace this law with real reforms that will actually lower costs and improve access to care. We will not make the same mistakes the Democrats made. We will not raise taxes in the middle of a recession. We will not push through a 2,700 page bill the American people can’t afford and don’t want.”
“Now that the Supreme Court has acted, the American people cannot afford for Congress to wait any longer,” he says. “It is time for Washington to repeal the president’s health care law and replace it with real health care reform.”
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