November 14, 2013 Mrs. Rita Tierney 428 Bay Road Brooklin, ME 04616-3022 Dear Mrs. Tierney, Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to President Obamas health care reform law and your support for defunding it. I voted against passage of Obamacare and have repeatedly voted to repeal, reform, and replace it ever since. One of the major reasons I oppose Obamacare is that it fails to rein in the cost of health care and to provide consumers with more affordable choices. Americans now have clear evidence that these concerns were well founded. Despite President Obamas earlier claims that Americans who were satisfied with their health insurance policies could keep them, millions of Americans are seeing their policies canceled and are faced with sky high premium increases when they try to find new health coverage . I also remain concerned that this law will impose billions of new taxes, fees, and penalties, leading to fewer choices and higher insurance costs for many middle-income Americans. O ur nation faces overwhelming financial challenges, including an unsustainabl e federal debt which exceeds $1 7 trillion. This health care law will only make efforts to reduce this debt that much more difficult. It is for reasons such as these that I have consistently voted to restrict funding for the implementation of the individual mandate, the employer mandate, and the entirety of this misguided law. Unfortunately, a group called the Senate Conservatives Fund—an outside, national group not from Maine—has tried to equate a recent cloture vote as a vote to support Obamacare . That simply defies logic. To suggest that I support Obamacare is false, misleading , and ignores my record. Despite my s trong opposition to Obamacare , opposition shared by all my Republican colleagues, the unfortunate reality is that the Democratic-led Senate and President Obama would never allow a bill to defund Obamacare to pass the Senate and be signed into law. Thus, the strategy of linking funding for Obamacare with the continued operation of government was doomed to failure from the start as the majority of our Senate Republican Caucus recognized. I nevertheless, will continue to oppose this law, which is harmful to small businesses and our economy. I continue to believe that President Obama and Congressional Democrats overreached their authority when they enacted a partisan law that will ultimately increase health care costs, decrease choice, impose billions of dollars in new taxes and penalties, and greatly expand the role of the federal government. I continue to hope that Congress will work together to address the very real health care concerns of the American people and the budget realities we face. Repealing this law and many of its poorly crafted and misguided mandates and replacing it with a fiscally responsible reform bill that contains costs and provides more choices is the best way forward. Again, thank you for contacting me. Sincerely, Susan M. Collins United States Senator Sincerely, Susan M. Collins United States Senator P.S. If you would like to receive weekly updates about my work on behalf of Maine in the United States Senate, you can subscribe to my e-newsletter by clicking here .
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 23:01:00 +0000
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