North Carolina: Thom Tillis Campaign Attacks Kay Hagan for Obamacare Support

Amid a new report that healthcare premiums in the Tar Heel State could rise by 30 to 60 percent over the coming years, the Thom Tillis campaign again slammed incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan for her support of Obamacare.

“We’re now finding out that ObamaCare could cause premiums to skyrocket by up to 60 percent over the next few years, a painful reminder of how Kay Hagan deliberately misled North Carolinians with false promises that ObamaCare would control costs and make healthcare more affordable,” said Tillis spokesman Daniel Keylin.

Earlier in the week, the Carolina Journal reported on a panel discussion about Obamacare in which an insurance agent said that Coventry Health Care of the Carolinas CEO Tracy Baker told his organization that premiums will rise.

“He can see in 2016 this thing shooting up anywhere from 30 to 60 percent in costs” insurance agent Rufus Langley said, according to the Carolina Journal.

Langley added that people will be also receiving termination notices, Carolina Journal reported: 

“Termination letters are going out this month,” he said. “A fair amount [of consumers] didn’t qualify” for coverage, though he had no specific numbers. “There will be people who are going to be flushed out, and not eligible for subsidies, because they didn’t provide the right information, or they didn’t verify whether or not they were U.S. citizens,” Langley said.

The Tillis campaign recalled in a release how Hagan sold Obamacare to North Carolinians and slammed her for her vote in favor of the law. 

“When selling ObamaCare to North Carolinians, Kay Hagan repeated PolitiFact’s ‘Lie of the Year’ no fewer than 24 times by promising that people who like their plans could keep them,” the Tillis campaign wrote in a release. “Hagan at one point even declared it was the ‘fundamental promise’ of the President’s bill. Last fall, over 473,000 North Carolinians received cancellation notices.”

Hagan and Tillis are engaged in a tight race for the U.S. Senate. The most recent Real Clear Politics Average has Hagan leading Tillis by 4.5 percentage points. 

“ObamaCare is hurting middle-class families who now won’t be able to pay their bills, yet Kay Hagan says she would still vote for ObamaCare again if given the chance,” Keylin added. “Thom Tillis is the only candidate in this race who will work towards healthcare reform that actually controls costs and increases healthcare options for North Carolinians.”