Physician-turned Congressman Tom Price tells Newsmax TV that the President’s Obamacare law “doesn’t work” but that the “American people will still not know the remarkable, onerous oppression that is coming to employers across this country from this employer mandate law until after the 2014 election.”
House Republicans sent a letter to the White House Tuesday asking President Barack Obama for clarification regarding the administration’s recent decision to postpone a key provision of Obamacare for one year to give employers of 50 workers and above more time to figure out the requirement to provide mandatory health coverage for their workers.
“This law doesn't work,” asserted the Georgia Republican in an exclusive interview. “So what they've done to punt is to say, ‘no, don't worry about it, we understand that it doesn't work for employers and therefore we're going to push it off for a year.’
Price said that the administration will reap political benefits from delaying the provision until after the mid-term elections.
“The American people will still not know the remarkable, onerous oppression that is coming to employers across this country from this employer mandate law until after the 2014 election,” he said.
Price, who serves as vice chairman of the House Budget Committee and who also sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, said that he suspects the Obama administration had been hearing from Democratic members of the House and Senate, who in turn had been fielding complaints from their constituents concerning Obamacare.
“What we're hearing is that ‘look, this doesn't work. I'm not able to hire people, the rules aren't in place. They don't work for employers. They decrease the ability of us to utilize any resources that we have for expanding our business and therefore getting the economy rolling again,” Price explained. “So it's just a drag completely and many Democrats in both the House and the Senate then communicated that to the White House.”
A member of the Republican Doctors Caucus, the former physician recognizes that the “status quo is unacceptable” but he sees “positive solutions” other than Obamacare.
“My former physician colleagues are just fit to be tied with the incredible, onerous activity from the federal government making it more and more difficult for them to care for their patients,” he said. “But there are positive solutions, again, that put patients and families and doctors in charge of medical decisions — and not Washington, D.C.”
Price, who sponsored a bill that seeks to prevent the IRS from enforcing or implementing any provision of Obamacare — H.R. 2009 Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013 — said he is “hopeful” that Senate Democrats continue to feel pressure from their constituents.
“Regardless of what happens in the Senate, it's important for the American people to understand and know with conviction that there are folks in Congress — in the House of Representatives, especially on the Republican side — who are standing up on their behalf, and battling as hard as we can to make certain that we get to what I call patient-centered healthcare, which is patients and families and doctors making medical decisions and not Washington, D.C.”
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He also supports H.R. 2300 — the Empowering Patients First Act.
“H.R. 2300 incorporates those things so that we can get covered, solve the insurance challenges — especially in portability and pre-existing in a way that respects patients — and then saves hundreds of billions of dollars,” according to Price. “And you can do all of that without putting Washington in charge.”
Price also told Newsmax that he was “disappointed” the Senate didn’t act prior to July 1 to hold down student loan rates, but he is optimistic that the House and Senate will agree on a measure before the August recess.
“We look forward to a work product coming out of the Senate that we'll be able to work with, and conference with the Senate, and send a bill to the president that he will sign so that the young people in the country will have some much greater certainty about the rates that they will be required to pay for paying back their student loans,” Price said.
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