Congressional Republicans will keep trying to chip away at the Affordable Care Act, building on efforts to repeal its taxes and other provisions, U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith said Monday.
Griffith, R-Salem, said he was disappointed with last week’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the insurance subsidies offered by federally run exchanges in 34 states, including Virginia, that opted not to create their own, state-run systems.
House Republicans were developing a stopgap plan to unveil if the case broke the other way. With that now off the table, Griffith said, the focus shifts back to trying to dismantle individual parts of the controversial health care law.
“What we’ve got to do is go in and look at those things that we can change,” he said. “We’ll try to take care of the worst parts of Obamacare and the problems those worst parts create.”
In the past two weeks alone, the House of Representatives has voted to repeal a medical device tax created by the ACA and to block the creation of a cost-control commission that some criticized as a “death panel.”
There is another bill pending that would scrap a tax levied on health insurance companies to generate money for the insurance subsidies.
The tax, created last year, is expected to bring in $11.3 billion this year. The bill to repeal it is likely to face an uphill climb in the Senate, but it’s amassed 230 co-sponsors in the House, including Griffith and U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County.
On Monday, Griffith highlighted the bill at a small-business luncheon in Salem put together by the National Federation of Independent Business, an ACA critic and member of the Stop the HIT [Health Insurance Tax] Coalition.
The tax, while levied against insurance companies, is quickly passed on to consumers and disproportionately affects small businesses and people on individual plans, organizers said. Self-funded insurance plans typically offered by large companies are exempt from the fee.
The business federation described it as a hidden tax that is driving up costs for 88 percent of small businesses and could jeopardize up to 286,000 private-sector jobs across the county by 2023.
One analysis published in 2011 by economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office, estimated the tax would raise insurance premiums by about 3 percent and cost an average family about $500 a year.
“You all know your employees, and you know a lot of those employees can’t afford $500 a year,” Griffith said to the group of more than a dozen business owners who gathered for Monday’s event.
“This is hurting American families.”
The bill, H.R. 928, doesn’t include a plan to replace the billions generated for health care subsidies, which Griffith said was “one of the bigger rubs.”
New funding would be needed under current federal policy, he said in an interview, but where it will be found remains undecided.
“But it certainly shouldn’t be coming out of the pockets of the average American family,” Griffith said.
Monday’s luncheon, held at Mac and Bob’s restaurant in downtown Salem, included a wide-ranging discussion about the ACA and what employers described as alarming cost increases and a confusing array of new regulations.
Bob Rotanz, co-owner of Mac and Bob’s, said his restaurant and its nearly 70 full-time-equivalent staffers will fall under the ACA requirements next year.
The popular eatery will have to offer insurance to more employees, and will have to offset the cost by reducing coverage or asking employees to contribute to the monthly premiums.
Up until now, Rotanz said, the restaurant had covered all premiums for the managers who qualified for health benefits.
“Looking forward, the company can’t afford to do that and pay for the new health care provisions for the employees we’ll have to cover come 2016,” he said. “There’s just no way I can do both.”
Last week’s Supreme Court ruling was cheered by advocates of health care coverage expansion — including Kim Duncan of Roanoke, who is among about 286,000 Virginians who get subsidized insurance through the federal exchange.
“I think everyone in the country should be afforded the peace of mind that I have now,” said Duncan, who works full-time for a small company of six that doesn’t offer employee benefits.
Duncan, 54, spoke about her experience alongside statewide advocates for health care expansion last week on the heels of the Supreme Court announcement.
Since using the federal exchange, she said, she’s seen her monthly premiums shrink from $478 to $391. Her deductible dropped from $2,500, which she said she never met, to $750. She’s also not penalized for her pre-existing conditions, which include scoliosis, hyperthyroidism and chronic migraines.
“Insurance companies, prior to the ACA going into effect, just either really hated me or really loved me because they could charge me basically whatever they wanted and knew I had to pay it,” she said.
“Being able to buy insurance through the federal exchange has afforded me the peace of mind of knowing that I’ll have insurance that is accepted at all of my doctors and that my prescriptions are covered, and it’s much better insurance than what I was buying on my own.”
Griffith said Monday he realizes there are people benefiting from the ACA, but he feels the losers outnumber the winners on the issue.
“The problem is it’s a smaller number than they anticipated in their original projections, of people who truly benefit,” he said. “And it’s costing everybody else a whole lot more than they told the American people it was going to cost.”