Obamacare is more unpopular than ever. 5 reasons why:

Every week there’s another Obamacare headline announcing another failure of the President’s health care program. Americans are starting to take notice. According to a recent survey, Obamcare is “more unpopular than ever” - with over half of Americans viewing Obamacare unfavorably.

Pollsters found the sudden change in opinion unusual. Drew Altman, the Chief Executive of the Kaiser Foundation that performed the survey, said “Normally, when negatives go up, you can tie it to an event,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

However, we know five reasons why Americans are increasingly disappointed, and it has nothing to do with current events. Instead, they all are consistent failures of the Affordable Care Act:

1. To avoid the expensive mandates under Obamacare, businesses are hiring more part-time workers – making full-time jobs harder to find.  Part-time workers are growing increasingly dismal at their full-time job prospects.

2. Premiums are continuing to rise – despite President Obama’s promises. Premiums for health plans through the federal exchange will rise by an average of 13.2% in Florida. In New York, rate hikes as high as 22% have been reported.

3. If you have Obamacare and you like your plan – it’s still going to cost you. People who decide to stick with their existing coverage are at risk for some of the biggest premium increases of all.

4. Small businesses are suffering. A lot. Higher premiums, less benefits, and great uncertainty are making the new health care mandates detrimental to small business owners and workers. Not to mention, the “SHOP” health care market for small businesses, is still not completely functioning.

5. Despite promises of “keeping your doctor” and health care choice – Obamacare is filled with medical limitations. For many Americans, doctors who treated them earlier are now turning them away, even if they haven’t changed insurers.

Obamacare is decreasing in popularity because the problems aren’t going away – in fact, they continue to grow. Our economy is suffering, consumers are facing higher costs and decreased coverage, and promises made are being broken. Americans deserve – and need – better health care alternatives. House Republicans are working to reverse this trend of harmful health care by presenting patient-centered, individualized alternatives that empower Americans’ to make their own health care decisions – not a government to decide for them.

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This week in Obamacare failures

Surprise, surprise. In this week’s roundup of Obamacare headlines, you’ll see a security breach, hidden enrollment data, more deleted emails, and higher health care costs that reduce work hours. Unfortunately, it’s business as usual for the this new health care law.

Rising Costs Reducing Work Hours

The burdensome regulations and rising health care costs of Obamacare are affecting school districts across the country. In Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, substitute teachers are seeing their hours cut to less than 30 hours a week due to a specific provision in the health care law.

“You have to feel bad for the districts and the kids because the districts are the ones who need the subs, and the kids are the ones who are going to get hurt, and that’s what we’re all here for,” said Lisa Ubassik, a 7th grade Language Arts teacher.

HealthCare.Gov Website Security Breaches

HealthCare.Gov is having more trouble – only this time it’s not users’ patience that’s at risk; it’s their personal information. Despite requests from both Republican leaders and journalists, the Obama administration refuses to release how secure HealthCare.gov is or what security measures it’s using.

Sam Baker, a health care correspondent for National Journal told Fox News, “We also know there were some security tests that were delayed … or certified sort of haphazardly before HealthCare.gov launched, so there are those legitimate security concerns. But there are also legitimate questions about if the necessary steps were taken to protect the data this site holds.”

Frighteningly, this week, the Washington Post reported that health care data breaches have affected over 30 million Americans.

Hidden Enrollment Data

Investor’s Business Daily pointed out that it’s been over 110 days since the last “monthly” report on Obamacare enrollment numbers. A Government Accountability Office report found that the numbers released by the Obama administration are “unreliable” because they don’t match up with industry numbers. Plus, as IBD notes: “Since Obamacare gives delinquents a three-month grace period before canceling plans, many of them could be off the rolls by now.”

So why is the self-described most transparent administration in history hiding enrollment numbers? Megan McArdle, a Bloomberg View columnist contends it’s because enrollment numbers are dropping.

She wrote, “People are still citing enrollment figures from March as the number of people covered by Obamacare policies, even though that number didn’t tell us how many would ultimately pay.”

Even More Deleted Emails

Both CNBC and Fox News reported that a top Obama administration official asked her spokeswoman to delete an email from a senior White House advisor that discussed problems with HealthCare.gov.

That makes at least 20 Obama administration officials who have lost or destroyed some portion of their emails.

“Time and again, the self-proclaimed ‘most transparent administration’ has been anything but,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) said. “And now we know that when HealthCare.gov was crashing, those in charge were hitting the delete button behind the scenes.”

These are just a few ways the president’s health care law is hurting Americans.

It’s more evidence that now – more than ever – Americans need real solutions for their health care.

House Republicans know that Americans are empowered when they are free to make their own health care decisions. That’s why our plan starts over with real health care reform that lets patients choose the plans they want, the doctors they need, and the costs they can afford.

Learn more about our health care plan and the health care accomplishments of the House Republican majority.

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Maryland grocery store to stop hiring due to Obamacare

Snider’s Superfoods in Maryland is being forced to limit the amount of full-time workers it employs due to harsh provisions in Obamacare.

Unfortunately, workers at Snider’s are not the only ones seeing jobs lost and hours cut because of the President’s health care law. Click here to see a list of employers being harmed by Obamacare.

Have you lost your job or had hours cut because of Obamacare?  Share your story at GOP.gov/YourStory to tell how you have been hurt by this law.

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Obamacare cannot be fixed by replacing Sec. Sebelius

WASHINGTON, DC – House Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) released the following statement about the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius:

“Secretary Sebelius’s resignation does not change the fact that ObamaCare is a fundamentally flawed and unworkable law – one that continues to hurt hardworking Americans across the country.  Six months after the launch of the President’s health care law, it is abundantly clear that its problems are insurmountable, and unlikely to be fixed by replacing the Secretary of Health and Human Services.  I am hopeful the next Secretary will be more cooperative with Congress – and provide more answers about Obamacare – than the last.”

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Republicans still need to make the case against ObamaCare - Washington Post

A Quinnipiac poll reports that by a 52 to 39 percent margin voter think Congress should repeal ObamaCare. By a 50 to 39 percent margin they think the Supreme Court should overturn it.

This is problematic for the Democrats on many levels. First, should the Supreme Court not strike down the law, the Republicans will not only have conservative ire to propel them in the election, but a solid clarion call that will resonate with a majority of voter. Second, it suggests that Obama won’t be able to use his “historic” achievement to rally voters. Republicans can accurately claim that the president devoted years to passing an unpopular (and possibly unconstitutional) bill, rather than tending to the economy. And finally, it puts all the Democratic senators who voted for it (they are all the 60th vote) on the hot seat. Be prepared to see a lot of “60th vote” ads in key senate races.

Now, if Mitt Romney is the nominee, the unpopularity of ObamaCare makes his job in attacking it easier. He can honestly say that in his state the majority of people liked the healthcare plan that they got, but in the country at large a majority is unhappy with ObamaCare.

This does not mean, however, that the argument should stop there.

In the debate Romney stated his objections to ObamaCare: “One, I don’t want to spend another trillion dollars. We don’t have that kind of money, it’s the wrong way to go. Number two, I don’t believe the federal government should cut Medicare by some $500 billion. Number three, I don’t think the federal government should raise taxes by $500 billion and, therefore, I will repeat Obama Care.” That’s a start, but there are three other policy arguments to make.

First, ObamaCare is not doing and won’t do, by the administration’s own admission, what it was intended to do: Bend the cost curve on health care downward. Just as we now all understand that the CLASS Act was unsustainable, we now can agree that healthcare costs won’t be tempered by ObamaCare.

Second, the methodology on which the administration is relying — empowerment of the 15-person Independent Patient Advisory Board — will not cut costs. It will simply eliminate or curtail care. It’s hard for some on the left, it seems, to understand that cutting how much the government pays for something won’t affect the underlying, real cost of the service. It is for this reason that such health care schemes eventually must rely on rationing to survive.

And finally, the mandate on contraception is the perfect example of why ObamaCare inevitably leads to government overreach and diminished personal liberty. Once the government tells you to buy insurance and that it must be more than a catastrophic, high-deductible plan, every medical service — not simply contraception — is micromanaged by the government. What you must buy, what your employer and your insurance company must cover and what the taxpayer must subsidize then become bureaucratic decisions by the federal government. If this wasn’t apparent to some at the inception of ObamaCare (conservatives certainly understood it, but others plainly didn’t), it surely is now.

Conservatives shouldn’t bank on the Supreme Court to do their work for them. ObamaCare, or parts of it, could well survive the Supreme Court’s review. It is important therefore to continue to make the policy arguments as to why the legislation is unwise, unworkable and unaffordable. Moreover, conservatives need to let the public know what the alternative to ObamaCare may be. If, unlike Obama, Republicans care about getting a mandate for their agenda, they would be wise to start laying out what a market-oriented alternative to ObamaCare would look like.

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