South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said on Fox last night that her state’s director of insurance is predicting premium increases “more like up to 70 percent” since Obamacare went into effect.
“We are getting ready to see tens of thousands of people in South Carolina get cancellation notices for their individual coverage and what we are seeing is exactly what we said was going to happen. Premiums are going up. Co-pays are going up. Deductibles are going up. Services are going down. This act is anything but affordable,” she said.
Still, Haley conceded that there’s only so much she can do as “we have fought Obamacare in South Carolina as much as we possibly could.”
“We said no the state exchanges. We said no to the Medicaid expansion. What we are going to do is continue to talk to D.C. and say, look, you have got us into this mess you guys now need to get us out of this mess. You know, what we are trying it do within our states is stay within our means and live within our budgets. They just turned and set every state back with this bill that we know did not work,” she said.
The governor said she’s “definitely discussed it with our federal delegation” and “we continue to talk about it with everybody that will listen.”
“I guess, the hard part for us is we are looking at citizens that are watching their insurance coverage go away. But we are also looking at citizens that thought they were getting free coverage,” Haley continued. “What bothers me is had this been any business, and they have 82 deadlines and missed 41 of them, they would have delayed it. You know, certainly we want to see Obamacare appealed, but at what point do you not delay this because it is such a catastrophe.”
“At what point do you not say this is doing more harm than good. Maybe we should step back and see how we can figure this out. That’s what we’re waiting on D.C. to do. It’s time for them to step up, Republicans and Democrats. We need their help in fixing this and we need it now.”
Haley said she believes the root of the problem is President Obama didn’t know “what was in the bill, to be honest.”
“I think this was his namesake bill that he wanted to see passed and he didn’t take time to think maybe this isn’t going to work. What would take a real leader is to turn around and say, you know what? This isn’t working let’s step it back,” she said. “But what you have now are real people who are losing their coverage and they promised them something that did not happen. He promised them that they would be able to keep their coverage. Not only are they not keeping their coverage, you are seeing everyone’s rates go up. You are seeing chaos across the healthcare distribution and among the communities.”
“It is time for him to step back and say, maybe we were wrong, maybe we are not ready maybe we need to wait on this and it’s not such a great idea.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member