Kansas City, Kan., Mayor-CEO Mark Holland will join area health leaders and mayors across the country Wednesday as they urge Congress to preserve the protections offered in the Affordable Care Act.
Wednesday’s event at 4:30 p.m. at City Hall will launch a month-long campaign in Kansas’ Third Congressional District designed to help health advocates and consumers express support for the ACA to their U.S. legislators.
“The Affordable Care Act has played a tremendous role in helping the residents of Wyandotte County, Kansas, and the nation gain access to quality health care,” Mayor Holland said. “With the law under attack in Washington, it is more important than ever that we raise our voices in support of the many benefits that the ACA has provided our communities.”
Those benefits, according to the mayor, include:
• Eliminating lifetime and annual limits
• Insuring children up to the age of 26
• Assuring eligibility for insurance coverage even with pre-existing conditions
• Guaranteeing coverage for pregnancy and breast cancer screenings
• Providing coverage for preventive services at no additional cost
• Funding public health (several hundred thousand dollars in Wyandotte alone)
Since the ACA went into effect, 6,000 Wyandotte County households, 137,000 Kansans, and 20 million Americans have gained access to health coverage. These people have received important health benefits, including mental health and substance use disorder benefits.
In Wyandotte County, Healthy Communities Wyandotte partnered with the Community Health Council of Wyandotte County to enroll many of the 6,000 households in health insurance plans through the ACA marketplace.
“When the ACA went into effect, our community stepped up to make sure our residents could take full benefit of the law,” Mayor Holland said. “The effort we put into enrolling these residents now must be turned toward making sure we protect their access to quality healthcare.”
ObamaCare, his signature legislation and crowning achievement. Remember when Obama repeatedly told you that under his plan you could keep your doctor, you keep your plan and that that it would drive down overall health costs to the point the average family would save $2,500 a year? And how ObamaCare would actually reduce the deficit?
“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people,” Obama said on June 15, 2009. “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan, period.”
Well, millions of people lost their doctors and their insurance plans, but that was just the start of the ObamaCare disaster. This year, Affordable Care Act premiums are exploding by 25 percent on average. In Arizona, they’re jumping by a stunning 116 percent. Deductibles are so high that even if ObamaCare recipients pay their premiums, they can’t afford to use their coverage in many cases.
As for the average American family saving $2,500 a year on health care, the exact opposite has happened. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the increase in health care costs for employer-sponsored benefits since 2008 is now $5,462. That is a 43 percent increase.
It just keeps getting worse. Choice in health care providers available through ObamaCare is evaporating. In states like Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming, people buying on the exchanges have a single insurer to choose from. It’s because insurers are now pulling out after losing massive amounts of money. So much for choice.