PNJ.com - Obamacare Will Devastate Florida's Seniors, Workers

Op-Ed

By Marco Rubio

Part of the American dream is the opportunity to work hard, enjoy retirement and leave your children better off than yourself. In Florida, we are blessed to be a top destination for people living out these dreams, with more than 3 million seniors residing here.

Unfortunately, Obamacare threatens to unravel their dreams by increasing health costs, disrupting current health plans, and preventing access to the doctors patients have come to trust.

Obamacare is also stifling job creation that hurts workers and leads to greater uncertainty about what their retirement years will hold.

As I traveled through North Florida recently, I repeatedly heard these Obamacare concerns.

In Gainesville and Jacksonville, entrepreneurs want to expand and hire more workers but are in a holding pattern because, even a month before its implementation date, Obamacare is full of unknowns. Businesses can't plan for the future or commit to hire new employees as long as Obamacare's mandates, taxes and regulations remain unclear or too burdensome.

One business owner I met in Gainesville sought legal help to ensure he would be in compliance with the law. A month later, he still had no clear-cut answer as the rules and regulations are too convoluted while others remain unwritten.

This is devastating to people trying to provide for their families because businesses are forced to delay new hires, reduce workers' hours or have to lay them off.

In Pensacola, a grocery store owner told me he might stop offering insurance to his employees because he had some seniors working for him and it was going to be too expensive to keep doing so. Obamacare's onerous regulations now make it easier for this employer to drop coverage, pay the Obamacare tax and have these workers buy their own insurance on the newly created exchange.

In Panama City, seniors I encountered complained of how they have been told for years that any changes ultimately made to save Medicare will not affect those currently retired or approaching retirement. Yet, Obamacare cuts $156 billion from Medicare Advantage -- $11 billion this year alone -- to fund other parts of Obamacare. These cuts will have an impact on today's health care plans that seniors currently enjoy. These cuts will do everything that President Obama said Obamacare wouldn't do.

These seniors are my constituents in Florida. They are the people I talked to during my visit and who I hear from on a regular basis. They include my friends, neighbors and others, including my mother.

Obamacare is threatening everything they worked hard for -- and it's threatening the future of their beloved children and grandchildren who are struggling in today's workforce.

This September, Congress will have to debate and pass a short-term budget. We should not approve one that spends a single cent to implement Obamacare. We should not waste another taxpayer dollar to force this destructive plan on our seniors, employers and middle-class workers.

It is unfortunate that the president and his allies would seemingly take our government to the brink in order to compel us to fund his disastrous health care law. Every day brings new examples of how this law is hurting working-class Americans, or how even former supporters of the law are now asking to be spared Obamacare's wrath.

This September is our last best chance to prevent the damage this law will do to seniors, their children and their grandchildren. Defunding Obamacare in the short-term budget is the first step to rejecting the diminished future Obamacare guarantees, while restoring the free market principles that have made our economy the envy of the world and that offer the best way to reform our health care system.

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