As I announced last week, the House will vote on the American Health Care Act this week to repeal and replace Obamacare. But as you know, reconciliation does not allow us to put everything we need into the bill.
So we’re actually starting on separate legislation. As we said, this is three phases. We’ll start with phase three beginning now. We’ll first have the Competitive Health Insurance Act. As you know, Obamacare has destroyed the marketplace. One-third of all the counties in this country only have one choice. That also creates a monopoly. Some counties have no insurers, and the government wants to penalize you because you can’t even buy it. Obamacare created 23 co-ops. Gave them more than $2 billion. Eighteen of those have already collapsed. So the goal is to provide federal anti-trust scrutiny to an industry that is becoming increasingly concentrated.
Second, we’ll consider the Small Business Health Fairness Act. We talk so much about letting small businesses pool together, but we also talk about across state lines. This allows small businesses to pool together and go across state lines.
I opened my first business when I was 19 years old. There’s three lessons you always learn. You’re the first to work, the last to leave, and the last to be paid. But you know those who work for you are like family. You want to be able to provide the health care for them. But you’re at a disadvantage between the big companies and the small ones. Why don’t we let the small businesses that help drive this nation pool together to have the strength of big business as well?
Because Obamacare regulation has actually made it worse. So much of what we talk about when we repeal Obamacare—yes it’s about health care. But what about the 30-hour workweek? What about the 50 employees or less that has decimated small business? Ninety-five percent of small businesses reported increased health insurance costs over the last five years. Ten thousand small businesses have closed down costing 300,000 jobs under Obamacare.
Now this is just part of phase three that we’re moving right now. But Thursday will be a big day. Thursday will be the day that we keep our word that we will repeal and replace and continue on with phase two and phase three.