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Dr. Boozman's Check-up

The rollout of Obamacare has been nothing short of a disaster. Before the law’s implementation, state officials assured us that there would be up to eight carriers offering insurance on the individual market. The President even compared shopping on the exchanges to buying airline tickets online from a website like Expedia or Travelocity.

Sounds easy right?

If you try logging on to the Arkansas Health Connector Website, you will find at most, four plans offering coverage. Over 75% of the state will have three or fewer provider options.

How does this shopping experience remotely resemble anything close to Expedia or Travelocity when you have only one, maybe two carriers to shop from?  This is sadly the case in large parts of Arkansas—just one airline with overpriced tickets for coach to pick from.

The troubles with Obamacare run far deeper than “technical glitches.” The Administration’s lackluster response to the online enrollment problems shines a light on this program’s gross mismanagement.

So far, the Administration is failing to meet constitutional requirements of fairness and equality before the law. This is why Congressmen Rick Crawford (AR-01), Tim Griffin (AR-02), Steve Womack (AR-03), Tom Cotton (AR-04) and I sent a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius requesting information so that we can evaluate legislative solutions to address these issues.  

We requested that she provide:

  1. All correspondence between HHS and the Arkansas Department of Insurance regarding the impact regulations will have on the number of providers within the Arkansas insurance market.
  2. All correspondence you provided to stakeholders in Arkansas regarding the status of the exchanges leading up to their launch on October 1, 2013.
  3. The number of confirmed enrollments in Arkansas, as of Friday, October 25, 2013.

The full letter is attached below. Secretary Sebelius needs to quickly and thoroughly respond to these questions. I will share the Secretary’s response upon receipt. 

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