Rep. Kelly Highlights Alternative to Obamacare on Fox's 'Your World w/Neil Cavuto'
Rep. Kelly: “We’ve got a plan: it’s the American Health Care Reform Act.”
WASHINGTON — Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, appeared live in-studio on Fox News Channel’s Your World with guest host Stuart Varney on Monday, December 16, 2013, to discuss the patient-centered alternative to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that he is co-sponsoring known as the American Health Care Reform Act (H.R. 3121). More information about the plan can be found here.
During the interview, Rep. Kelly directly addressed President Obama’s false charge that opponents of Obamacare have not offered any alternatives. He explained his alternate plan, and shared a recent real-life story detailing Obamacare’s harmful impact on his constituents.
Interview highlights from Rep. Kelly:
“The president… I think he thinks that if he says it often enough and long enough and loud enough, people will listen to him. But I do think now we realize the emperor has no clothes. And we’re looking at this and we’re saying, ‘This just isn’t working, Mr. President.’ And we’ve been going and talking to him, but he’s a tough guy to talk to, because if you’re not speaking his language, he doesn’t hear you.”
“You know and I know this was never about health care for people — this is about insurance for people. There’s a huge difference. We have the best health care in the world. Now [our country’s most vulnerable] just have to have access to it and it has to be affordable. We’ve done things that make commonsense approaches to making it easier for everyday Americans to be able to go to sleep at night, put your head on the pillow, and know you’re covered. We’ve got you covered. And that’s what we’re there for. That’s our job. If we can’t do that, we shouldn’t be in Washington.”
“Well we’ve got a plan: it’s the American Health Care Reform Act. You can go to Kelly.house.gov — now that’s a website you can get on – and you can read the information. It’s all there. It’s been there for a long time. We’ve tried to be driving this message. But again, this doesn’t fit the president’s narrative. This has nothing to do with the president or his personality; this has to do with his performance.”
“There’s no ‘one size fits all.’ That’s the beauty of our plan. We allow people to choose what’s best for them.”
“When I go home to Butler, there’s a little restaurant that I eat at — Natili’s. It’s a fourth generation place, great Italian food. Cindy waits on me all the time. Now, the last time I was in with my wife, [Cindy] said, ‘Mike, can I talk to you about something? I hate to interrupt your dinner, but you know what? I am really torn. My husband’s company no longer is going to cover me. They’re just going to cover him.’ … Because of Obamacare. And she says, ‘Now I have to go out and get my own insurance. I checked: it’s going to cost me $780 dollars a month. I can’t work enough hours, I can’t generate enough tips, to pay for that.’ … She says, essentially, ‘I have no insurance.’ And you know what? Cindy’s right. And there are 250,000 Pennsylvanians that are finding out that they no longer have health care.”
“I’m an automobile dealer. Next year, I’ve got to come back and come up with a plan that makes sense for the people that I’ve worked with for the last sixty-some years. And my dad started our business. One of the things we had, a hallmark — we took care of our associates. This Obamacare makes it impossible for us to maintain the great relationship we had with the people that worked with us and tried to keep our customers happy. It’s a terrible thing to do to the American people.”
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