2014 State of the Union address: on Health Care

Green Party: ObamaCare focuses on just selling more insurance

The bottom line of Obama's comments on the health law was that more people have health insurance and insurance companies can't deny people based on pre-existing conditions. He urged everyone to make their friends and family buy insurance.

What he didn't say is that people with health insurance in the US still can't afford the care they need and face bankruptcy if they have a serious health problem. And although insurance companies cannot deny policies to people with pre-existing conditions, they have a number of ways to avoid paying for people's care.

The `health law perpetuates a health system that treats health care as a commodity so that people only receive the amount of health care they can afford rather than treating it as a public good, as does every other industrialized nation.

Barack Obama: FactCheck: Some Medicare premiums went up under ObamaCare

THE FACTS: Some Medicare premiums have gone up, not stayed flat.

As Obama said, insurers can no longer turn people down because of medical problems, and they can't charge higher premiums to women because of their sex. The law also lowered costs for seniors with high prescription drug bills. But Medicare's monthly premium for outpatient care has gone up in recent years.

Although the basic premium remained the same this year at $104.90, it increased by $5 a month in 2013, up from $99.90 in 2012. Obama's health care law also raised Medicare premiums for upper-income beneficiaries, and both the president and Republicans have proposed to expand that.

Barack Obama: FactCheck: Yes, 9M signed up, but only 3M are newly insured

THE FACTS: That's not to say 9 million more Americans have gained insurance under the law. The administration says about 6 million people have been determined to be eligible for Medicaid since Oct. 1 and an additional 3 million roughly have signed up for private health insurance through the new markets created by the health care law. That's where Obama's number of 9 million comes from. But it's unclear how many in the Medicaid group were already eligible for the program or renewing existing coverage.

Likewise, it's not known how many of those who signed up for private coverage were previously insured. One large survey suggests the uninsured rate for US adults dropped by 1.2 percentage points in January, to 16.1%. That would translate to roughly 2 million to 3 million newly insured people since the law's coverage expansion started Jan. 1.

Cathy McMorris-Rodgers: Don't go back to way things were,but ObamaCare isn't working

No, we shouldn't go back to the way things were, but this law is not working. Republicans believe health care choices should be yours, not the government's.

And that whether you're a boy with Down syndrome or a woman with breast cancer, you can find coverage and a doctor who will treat you. So we hope the President will join us in a year of real action--by empowering people--not making their lives harder with unprecedented spending, higher taxes, and fewer jobs.

As Republicans, we advance these plans every day because we believe in a government that trusts people and doesn't limit where you finish because of where you started.

Mike Lee: ObamaCare gives far too much power to government

Lee gave a brief overview of the ObamaCare alternative: "Health-care policy used to give too much power to insurance companies; ObamaCare now gives far too much power to government. We know that real reform will put health-care dollars and decisions where they belong: in the hands of patients and families and their doctors and nurses. So reformers in both the House and the Senate are hard at work developing new, patient-centered reforms to control health-care costs, ensure access to affordable coverage for all Americans, and provide extra help for the poor and the sick."

Barack Obama: 12 million covered; zero denied for pre-existing conditions

That's what health insurance reform is all about--the peace of mind that if misfortune strikes, you don't have to lose everything. Already, because of the Affordable Care Act, more than 3 million Americans under age 26 have gained coverage under their parents' plans. More than 9 million Americans have signed up for private health insurance or Medicaid coverage.

And here's another number: zero. Because of this law, no American can ever again be dropped or denied coverage for a preexisting condition.

Steve Beshear: OpEd: Like a man possessed in getting people covered

And if you want to know the real impact this law is having, just talk to Governor Steve Beshear of Kentucky, who's here tonight. Kentucky's not the most liberal part of the country, but he's like a man possessed when it comes to covering his commonwealth's families. "They are our friends and neighbors," he said. "They are people we shop and go to church with--farmers out on the tractors; grocery clerks--they are people who go to work every morning praying they don't get sick. No one deserves to live that way."

Steve's right. That's why, tonight, I ask every American who knows someone without health insurance to help them get covered by March 31st. Moms, get on your kids to sign up. Kids, call your mom and walk her through the application.

Ted Cruz: Obama changed ObamaCare mandate deadline by a blog post

There is no example of lawlessness more egregious than the enforcement--or non-enforcement--of the president's signature policy, the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Obama has repeatedly declared that "it's the law of the land." Yet he has repeatedly violated ObamaCare's statutory text.

The law says that businesses with 50 or more full-time employees will face the employer mandate on Jan. 1, 2014. President Obama changed that, granting a one-year waiver to employers. How did he do so? Not by going to Congress to change the text of the law, but through a blog post by an assistant secretary at Treasury announcing the change.

Ted Cruz: Obama asked companies to disobey ObamaCare rules for a year

In other words, rather than go to Congress and try to provide relief to the millions who are hurting because of the "train wreck" of ObamaCare (as one Senate Democrat put it), the president instructed private companies to violate the law and said he would in effect give them a get-out-of-jail-free card--for one year, and one year only. Moreover, Obama simultaneously issued a veto threat if Congress passed legislation doing what he was then ordering.

In the more than two centuries of our nation's history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking private companies to do the same.