Rep. Fedorchak on Fox News: “Obamacare is anything but affordable”
Washington, D.C. — Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak (R-ND) joined Jon Scott on FOX Report to share her perspectives on the Unaffordable Care Act and the Republicans’ affordability agenda. Check out highlights below:
On the so-called Affordable Care Act:
As we've seen, the “Affordable Care Act”—as it was dubbed and promised by the Democrats when they passed it without a single Republican vote of support—has been anything but affordable.
It should be renamed the “Unaffordable Care Act” because it has left Americans paying much higher costs for their health care while getting marginal results and little improvement for that added expense.
Unfortunately, the enhanced premium tax credits that are the focus of the Democrats, we know are a failure.
Under those policies in the last three years, we've seen health care premiums increase by 31 percent.
Throwing more money at that program is not the solution Americans are looking for.
On Republican reforms to lower health care costs:
We want to put patients first and help them be in the driver's seat of their own health care.
In the Working Families Tax Cuts plan, [Republicans] passed reforms that would have, according to CBO, reduced premiums by 13 percent. Those were stripped out by the Democrats in the Senate. So we can start there.
You also have millions of people who have zero premium plans, which really takes away the accountability for the patients and the people who own the plans.
35 percent of the premiums paid by the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits are considered to be phantom plans and phantom premiums. So, there's fraud that needs to be addressed.
We need to reform the PBM situation, and we have bipartisan legislation that was brought forward last session that could do a great deal of good in that regard, reducing the cost of pharmaceuticals.
On Americans wanting lower prices across the board:
Right now, we are paying the prices of four years of the Green New Deal [and] four years of more regulation in the housing market.
The last four years of the Biden administration saw the government taking a bigger role in the marketplace across the board, and that drives costs up.
We are returning to more commonsense free market principles, lower taxes, [and] lower regulation.
That doesn't change the marketplace overnight, but it will change it quickly, and it will be more lasting.
I'm confident that citizens in North Dakota and across America are going to start seeing the fruits of that labor.
On Democrats vs Republicans on affordability:
The Democrat solution is giving “free” things to people, and it's easy to be Santa Claus. It's popular.
The Republican solutions are a little less sexy. They don't come across as attractive on the front end—lower taxes, lower regulations—that sounds kind of boring. But those are the things that we know work.
We’ve seen it in my state of North Dakota. That has been the way my state has been governed for the last 30 years, and we have one of the best economies in the whole country.
We know [our policies are] the commonsense fundamentals that work long-term for the economy.
They support innovation, and that's what drives prices down. It drives affordability up, and that's going to be what ultimately pays dividends for American citizens.
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