opinion

Obamacare a national disaster, but it’s Congress’ mess

“Obamacare” has been one of the most legally challenged laws in recent history, with the Supreme Court being called to sort out a number of different issues with the law.

The latest case, King v. Burwell, revolves around the IRS potentially paying illegal subsidies to people who bought their premiums on the federal exchange, Healthcare.gov.

It is more than unfortunate that Congress had to pass the law to find out what was in it, as former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi so eloquently demanded of her congressional colleagues on the floor of the House.

Their carelessness has cost patients, health care providers and taxpayers across the country, including here in Tennessee, thousands of dollars.

The court is expected to make its ruling on King v. Burwell later this month. In all likelihood, the court will side with the plaintiffs and declare the subsidy payments to be illegal, which means only people enrolling in Obamacare plans on state exchanges, like Covered California, will be eligible for subsidies.

There will undoubtedly be calls for state legislatures across the country to establish their own exchanges and patch Obamacare up again.

Why are states being left to fix something Washington attempted to force upon us? Recent history will tell you that state exchanges are more of a poorly thought-out theory than a practical solution.

Several states are under federal investigation from the FBI and other agencies for their failed exchanges. Transitioning an exchange from federally run to state-run is costly and time consuming.

When the transition is finally made, state-run exchanges fail. Many states, like Oregon and Hawaii, are shutting down their exchanges and pushing people back onto Healthcare.gov as their own websites and infrastructure collapse.

This is only after spending hundreds of millions of dollars of scarce public resources on these exchanges, all of which have done little more than line the pockets of a few companies setting up the exchanges.

We are not imagining or predicting these scenarios; they have already happened and will continue to happen if the states don’t stand up for their rights against Washington.

We’ve already seen what Obamacare has done to us. People have lost their insurance and their doctors. Many have seen their premiums and out-of-pocket costs skyrocket, with BlueCross BlueShield recently requesting a massive 36.3 percent premium increase for the coming year.

This is an ill-conceived law that risks public dollars to bail it out. It does not seem wise to risk those hundreds of millions of dollars that could be going to schools or roads so that a handful of people can get Obamacare subsidies.

It’s time for us to stand firm and tell Congress that it needs to clean up its own mess. This is Washington’s problem and it needs to be repealed by Washington, not put back together by Tennesseans’ tax dollars.

The bottom line is Congress has been allowed to force states into implementing these failing systems, then turn to us to bail them out far too many times.

We will push back and tell Congress to leverage the opportunity it has as the Supreme Court delivers its King v. Burwell decision. It’s time for a new level of accountability and a continuation of our fight against federal government mandates in our personal lives.

Rep. Glen Casada, R-Franklin, represents Williamson County in the Tennessee General Assembly and is chairman of the Tennessee House Republican Caucus.