On the recordJuly 25, 2018
I am proud to stand before you today to discuss two bills that expand choice and offer lower cost. And lower cost and choice are what are needed in healthcare. Back home in South Carolina, the average premium before ObamaCare, in 2013, in the individual market, was $233. In 2017--which the premiums were set before the President took office--before the ``assault'' on ObamaCare that my colleague was speaking of, the premium reached $512. That is a $279-per-month increase in 4 years, a 120 percent increase from 2013 to 2017. Before ObamaCare, 85 percent of the people in the country were covered by health insurance. At the peak, under the Affordable Care Act, 91 percent were covered. So we covered 6 percent more people, and that is a good thing. But what was the cost of that? To cover 6 percent more of our population, the other 85 percent, who were already covered, either by Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance, had to pay another 120 percent on their premiums in South Carolina, 105 percent nationwide. And the premiums are going to go up double digits again this year. We need lower cost, and we need choice. In South Carolina, all of the insurance companies have pulled out of the exchanges except for one. In fact, 40 percent of the counties in the country have only one choice for health insurance. That is no choice at all. It is either health insurance or nothing. You select from that one company, or you get nothing. We need lower cost, and we need choice.…
