GUEST POST: Mary’s Between A Rock And A Hard Place On Obamacare

by Emily Cornell, Executive Director, Keep Louisiana Working

In case you missed it last week, 93,000 individuals, so far, in Louisiana were notified they would be losing their healthcare coverage thanks to Obamacare, and Senator Mary Landrieu.  This heinous number doesn’t even include those who are guaranteed to lose their coverage provided by their employer.  Those numbers are still being calculated by the Obama Administration, and will be released in 2014. Senator Landrieu quickly made attempts to distance herself from the damage that Obamacare is inflicting and reports that the Administration knew millions of Americans would lose their healthcare coverage once the law was implemented.

All the while defending her support of the law, Landrieu jumped to cosponsor a bill requiring insurers to continue providing coverage to individuals currently participating in the individual market. Despite her efforts, Charles Krauthammer still labeled Landrieu “loser of the week”, for her inability to secure a vote on the legislation.

According to a report on November 19th by the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, Landrieu’s bill “would likely cause substantially higher marketplace premiums” as a result of the requirement imposed on insurers. The requirement mandates insurers continue providing to individuals enrolled as of December 31, 2013, “on a permanent basis,” not just a single calendar year, even if their current plans do not meet the Obamacare minimums.  This would therefore create a separate group of individuals, not be included in these grandfathered plans, who would be required to comply with the Obamcare requirements “creating two markets with disparate rules.”  This second group would be those purchasing their coverage on the Obamacare marketplaces, and is expected to be more costly to insure therefore victims of much higher marketplace premiums.

The requirement proposed in Sen. Landrieu’s bill is “unworkable” according to the report. In a separate piece, the Center for Economic and Policy Research went so far as to say Landrieu’s bill was a “government takeover of the insurance industry.”  They even accused Landrieu of “just introducing [the bill] for political purposes.”

Landrieu is clearly attempting to rewrite her history of supporting Obamacare, but her alternative is by no means the fix Obamacare needs.  The Senator is quickly finding herself between the rock that is the “bungled” Obamacare and the hard place that is her own “highly problematic” “government takeover.”

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