Obamacare is broken, and Republicans can fix it: Column

When President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act seven years ago, he saddled Americans with a healthcare system that put the ultra-liberal agenda ahead of our best interests. We were promised that Obamacare would bring down healthcare costs with increased competition between insurance providers. We were promised we could keep our healthcare plans. We were promised that Obamacare would not raise middle class taxes. Instead, the law brought the American people rising premiums, unaffordable deductibles, fewer insurance choices and higher taxes. We were let down.

Then, in 2014, Nancy Pelosi sought to defend the collapsing law by claiming its success should be measured by the number of people who had access to affordable healthcare and its ability to lower skyrocketing costs.

By Pelosi’s own standards, Obamacare has been an unmitigated failure.

This year alone, Obamacare premiums have gone up by an average of 25%, and in some places have risen by over 100%. Individuals have insurance that they cannot afford — high deductibles distort the meaning of coverage. Under the two most popular Obamacare health plans, thousands of families have been forced to shoulder burdensome deductibles equivalent to 10% and 6% of the median American household income. This is not affordable.

Obama’s promise of “choice” has turned out to be fiction for people living in more than 1,000 counties who are left with one insurance provider on their state exchanges. No one can deny Obamacare is in a ‘death spiral’ when the number of Americans with only one insurer from which to choose jumps from 2% to 17% in one year. This is not choice.

Paul Ryan: Our plan offers more choices

The Republican reckoning on health care: Jill Lawrence

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

Our families can no longer afford to support an expensive, unsustainable healthcare system, but for years Democrats ignored the warnings that Obamacare would increase the deficit. It was clear Democrats realized opposition to the healthcare law was growing when they wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars last year alone in an attempt to rescue Obamacare’s plummeting popularity. Even still, they refuse to acknowledge the legislation is hurting the very people they claimed to help.

Unlike the Democrats, Republicans and Trump are listening to the American people and promised to repeal and replace this disaster. They have worked together to introduce legislation in Congress that ensures Americans with pre-existing conditions have access to coverage, and that we have a stable transition for Americans currently enrolled in the healthcare exchanges. Republican-led reforms would help Americans purchase their own coverage through the use of tax credits and expanded health savings accounts, so that they can get a plan that works for them, not a one-size-fits-all plan forced on them by the government. Our families would have the freedom to purchase health insurance across state lines, creating a truly competitive national marketplace that will drastically reduce costs and provide far better care.

Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects this new healthcare legislation would cut our federal deficit by $337 billion. While Obamacare drove up premiums, the Republican-led healthcare reforms would lower premiums by 10%. Obamacare forced small business layoffs, but the repeal and replace bill would lower taxes by $883 billion. These are real reforms that our country needs, and stands in sharp contrast to the out of control spending Obamacare inflicted on our economy.

Though this new legislation would benefit those they represent, Democrats are digging in their heels in the name of partisanship and preserving Obama’s failed legacy.

Thanks to a unified Republican government, I am confident that Republicans in Congress will deliver on their promises to the American people and bring positive change to our broken healthcare system.

Ronna McDaniel is chair of the RNC. Follow her on Twitter @RRMGOP

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.