Political Quotes

“Mr. President, there was a fairly remarkable hearing in the House of Representatives yesterday in the Energy and Commerce Committee, upon which I used to sit when I was there. It called together some of the Nation's biggest insurers to talk about the failures of the Affordable Care Act as seen through the lens of the insurance companies. First up on the docket for Republicans was the claim that no one had paid their premiums, that people had signed up for plans, but a report which had been released by the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House suggested in fact only maybe about 60 percent of them actually paid their premiums. So they asked representatives from WellPoint, Aetna, and other insurance companies to confirm that fact, and of course they did not. WellPoint said, in fact, 90 percent of the people who signed up for WellPoint plans--the biggest insurer through the Affordable Care Act-- have paid their premiums. Aetna said the number for them is somewhere in the low to mid-80s. Both numbers are actually representative of what people in the non-Affordable Care Act market pay with respect to their premiums. When we dig deeper into the Energy and Commerce report, we found out the reason they suggested that only about 60 percent of the people had paid their premiums is because most people's premiums hadn't been due yet. They didn't have to pay them when they had signed up for the plans in February and March. So they tried another tactic.…”