Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden said the withdrawal of the largest insurer from MNsure, the state's health care exchange, is evidence of the Affordable Care Act's failure, blaming President Obama and his opponent, Sen. Al Franken, for enacting what he called a broken system.
PreferredOne was the top-selling insurer on MNsure, but its CEO said they'd be pulling out of the exchange, saying their participation was "not sustainable." PreferredOne insured six out of 10 MNsure consumers who now will have to seek out other providers and may result in higher healthcare premiums.
"I'm a businessman, and as a businessman I know that when someone provides 60 percent of the market and is the low-cost provider drops out of the program, you're going to see a significant increase in premiums. This doesn't work." McFadden said, pointing to a chart from the Hoover Institution that illustrated the tangle of functions that make up the ACA. "I'm very disappointed in President Obama and Sen. Franken because this program has been based on lies."
The biggest of all, he said, is that Obama care decreased the cost of insurance in the country. PreferredOne's withdrawal is proof of that, he argued. However, he said he does not believe the insurance company should be held responsible for leaving MNsure. He remained focused on a system he said could be fixed by a "state-based, market-based, patient-centered" system that allows consumers to buy their insurance across state lines.
Franken spokeswoman Alexandra Fetissoff said that because of the ACA, 95 percent of Minnesotans are now insured, while the state's uninsured rate has been halved.
"Mike McFadden would repeal the health law and take us back to a time when women were charged more for health coverage simply because they were women, people with preexisting conditions were denied coverage, half the bankruptcies in this country were connected with health care emergencies and young adults couldn't get covered under their parents' plan," she said in a statement. "Once again, Mike McFadden has proven that he would rather jump at the opportunity to play politics than actually solve problems."
McFadden made his statements on the day the Franken campaign launched another ad claiming McFadden's investment firm, Lazard Middle Market, was involved in a merger that moved an American pharmaceutical company to Ireland to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
McFadden called the ad "patently false," saying his firm did not represent the company that made the inversion, and that Franken praised a similar move by Medtronic to new headquarters in Ireland. However, while Franken praised the move as a potential job-creator, he also said the it "needs careful scrutiny."
McFadden said he said companies leave the country because they lack the tax incentives to stay.
"What this is evidence of is you have a president and a Democratic senator and a Democratic Senate that don't understand tax policy and haven't done anything over the last six years to make the United States have a competitive tax climate." he said.
