President Barack Obama once promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” under ObamaCare. But that’s hardly been the case as millions lost their existing coverage.
Now many families forced into the Obamacare exchanges will find that they can’t even keep their new policies. Earlier this year, the nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth, announced it was pulling out of most state exchanges. On Monday, another major health insurer, Aetna, announced it will pull out of eleven (AZ, FL, GA, IL, KY, MO, NC, OH, PA, SC, and TX) of the 15 states where it offers ObamaCare plans – cutting their availability from 778 counties down to just 242. This will mean fewer choices and competition, resulting in higher prices. Of these 11 states, at least seven (PA, OH, FL, AZ, GA, NC, and MO) are considered presidential “toss-up” states by Realclearpolitics.com. Could this latest ObamaCare failure affect the election?
According to the latest RealClearpolitics.com poll aggregates, Hillary Clinton holds a comfortable lead in just one of these swing states: Pennsylvania (Clinton +9). She and Donald Trump are within the margin of error in Ohio (Clinton +3), Florida (Clinton +4), North Carolina (Clinton +2), South Carolina (Trump +2), and Missouri (Trump +5), while they are tied in Arizona and Georgia. Republicans can highlight ObamaCare’s failings in these and other states to their advantage. Voters are angry about the law’s failures and concerned about losing their coverage and seeing costs increase. The latest national poll aggregate shows only 39% of Americans approve of the law while 49% disapprove. Mrs. Clinton and every Democratic Senate and House candidate are unable to defend the indefensible. Republican candidates can and should go on offensive, offering credible alternatives to strengthen their appeal to voters.
