{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://noem.house.gov/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=4a254780-d98b-4dda-a71e-100155bb3714", "Weekly Column: The Affordable Care Act's Unaffordability", "2013-11-15", "2013", "2013-11", "Republican", "House", "SD", "Kristi Noem", "N000184", "noem.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Since the new healthcare exchanges opened on October 1, my office has received dozens of calls and letters from South Dakota families who are seeing their premiums skyrocket.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of the South Dakotans calling into our office have explained that even when their plans were grandfathered in, their premiums were not.\u00a0\r\nOne family had to triple their deductable from $2,500 to $7,500 in order to get premiums down to where they were before Obamacare.\u00a0 That\u2019s just not acceptable and in many cases it\u2019s not affordable either.\r\nWe learned earlier this month that just 27,000 Americans signed up for coverage on Healthcare.gov between October 1 and November 1.\u00a0 Just 58 of those individuals were South Dakotans.\u00a0 Much of the blame for low enrollment numbers has been placed on website glitches, but as the President has said on many occasions, the Affordable Care Act is more than a website and I agree.\u00a0\r\nEven in states that ran their own exchanges and had a working sign-up website, enrollment was low.\u00a0 Just over 75,000 enrollees entered the program in these states, falling well below expectations.\u00a0\r\nThe poor enrollment is more than a communications problem for the administration.\u00a0 It is also a fundamental problem for the program.\u00a0 The healthcare exchanges were designed with an understanding that large amounts of young, healthy people needed to sign up in order to balance out the costs of older and less healthy individuals.\u00a0 Low enrollment figures mean these young people aren\u2019t signing up, which could cause premiums to increase even more.\r\nWe need to protect as many people as we can with reforms to the Affordable Care Act, but temporary fixes, such as allowing individuals to stay on their current plans for one more year, won\u2019t fix the healthcare law\u2019s underlying problems.\u00a0 The only way to do that is to replace the Affordable Care Act with a consumer-driven approach.\r\nI co-sponsored one such alternative, the American Health Care Reform Act.\u00a0 This legislation would increase competition by allowing Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines.\u00a0 It would reform medical malpractice laws and change the tax code so families and individuals could deduct healthcare costs on their tax filing, just like businesses already do.\u00a0 It would expand access to Health Savings Accounts and still provide a safeguard for individuals with pre-existing conditions.\u00a0 These reforms will give consumers more choices and target the core drivers of healthcare costs.\r\nThe healthcare law isn\u2019t working.\u00a0 South Dakotans have called my office and reported that their premiums are rising by $3,000, $7,000, even $12,000 a year because of the new government regulations created by Obamacare.\u00a0 For taxpayers, the costs are also on the rise.\u00a0 President Obama originally estimated the Affordable Care Act would cost around $900 billion, but more recent projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office show it will be closer to $1.8 trillion, double the original estimate.\r\nIt\u2019s just not affordable.\u00a0 This week, I launched a new effort to better hear the stories of those who have been impacted.\u00a0 South Dakotans can visit www.Noem.House.Gov/MyStory to tell me about the real impact the Affordable Care Act is having on their family.\r\nToo often we throw around numbers and projections, but here in South Dakota we are now finding out the real personal costs of the health care law.\u00a0 I look forward to hearing your story.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://noem.house.gov/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=4a254780-d98b-4dda-a71e-100155bb3714"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8642388749867678, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}