Political Quotes

“I thank Mr. Tonko so very much for his comments. He covered the issues very well. I want to go to two issues really quickly that need to, I think, be wrapped up here. First of all, the President talks about the Affordable Care Act dying, and it is not going to make it. That could happen because of actions that he is specifically telling the administration to take. There are three different areas, one of which is being very late in providing the cost-sharing funding programs for those people who are purchasing insurance. It is discretionary right now. We ought to make that mandatory and not given the President the option of not providing those funds. If those funds are not provided, then, yes, the exchanges will collapse. Secondly, we know that there is the cross subsidization from one insurance company to another called reinsurance that tries to balance out the risk pool of each individual insurance company. Some insurance companies, for many different reasons, wind up with a very high risk, high cost population. Others are able to have a very low risk. The risk needs to be balanced out between those two. If that is not done, then there will be a death spiral amongst the insurance companies. Thirdly, under the Affordable Care Act, people are mandated to buy insurance or else pay a penalty. That penalty is enforced by the Internal Revenue Service, which has been specifically given instructions by the President not to enforce the law.…”