Daily Local - Healthcare Groundhog Day

Op-Ed

By Rep. Joe Pitts

This week, groundhogs across the country like Octoraro Orphie and Punxsutawney Phil got dragged from their homes and made to look for their shadow. But Groundhog Day is now more than a large rodent predicting the weather. It is also a byword for doing the same thing over and over again because of the 1993 movie named for the day.

So there were at least a few who noted that House Republicans passed yet another repeal of Obamacare the same week as Groundhog Day. Why would we do it again? This is now the fourth time since Republicans took back the House that we have passed legislation fully repealing the law. Many wonder why we keep trying when President Obama is still sitting in the White House.

I actually think Groundhog Day the movie should be a little inspiration for the effort to repeal Obamacare. Bill Murray's surly weatherman wakes up every morning in Punxsutawney until he learns to treat people with dignity and respect and embrace his life in the small town. He keeps having to relive the same day until he gets it right.

Obamacare wasn't the health reform we needed or deserved. Until we get rid of it and do health reform right, we are going to keep waking up in a world where Americans struggle to afford health care coverage, where finding a good job is hard, and where medical innovation is hampered.

Perhaps the biggest failure of the Affordable Care Act is that it is making health care less affordable for millions of Americans. Over the past few years, I've heard from hundreds of constituents who have seen their premiums and deductibles climb because of the law.

One of the worst things the law has done is punish business owners who were already providing good insurance to their employees. Last fall, I heard from two local business owners both facing similar situations, Nelson Sensenig and Ron Fritz. Both fully paid for their employee's health insurance premiums, but with costs rapidly accelerating because of new Obamacare requirements, both had to look for new coverage or consider adding an employee contribution.

Neither of them needed a government mandate to tell them that providing coverage was a good idea, but now they are struggling to balance their books and keep the same quality of insurance. The bill was supposed to save Americans money, but average premiums in the individual insurance market have climbed 49 percent since the law was created.

By driving up the cost of benefits, the law is making harder to find good, full-time jobs. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the health care law will reduce the number of full-time equivalent workers by 2.5 million.

The law's new definition of full-time work starting at 30 hours a week may also be hurting our children's' education. I recently heard from a local teacher that schools are finding it hard to manage substitutes for specialty classes like PE, music, and art. Substitutes have been limited to no more than 3.5 days a week. In some cases students have either lost these classes or been packed into one combined classroom with too many kids. We've also seen local school districts forced to lay off workers and contract out positions like food service and janitorial work.

The American health system has often been compared unfavorably to socialized systems in other countries. Countries that claim they are providing good care to all citizens. But many of these systems contribute little or nothing to medical innovation. They only provide the most basic of care. They rely on American innovation to move health care forward. However, the law actually puts up a major new barrier to new medical devices.

The new tax on medical devices is actually set up like a tax on alcohol or cigarettes, what is known as an excise tax. The tax is on total sales of medical devices, regardless of profit. Basically, excise taxes are meant to discourage something. But why on earth are we discouraging new life-saving devices?

Obamacare isn't a bad dream. It's not a movie. It's a bad law that is having bad effects. We need to try and try again to get health reform right and getting rid of a bad law has to be the first step.

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