Hillsdale Daily News: Hillsdale Daily News: Walberg focuses on health care changes at town hall meeting

COLDWATER — As Congressman Tim Walberg (R-Tipton) continues his tour of Michigan's 7th congressional district to discuss the affects of the Affordable Care Act on district, his message has been to continue discussions on ways to improve health care coverage while repealing "Obamacare."

Walberg spoke to a room of roughly 40 people Thursday at the Coldwater Health Center for a town hall meeting where he admitted President Obama is unlikely to sign any bill that repeals the Affordable Care Act. The next option, according to Walberg, is to discuss what can be done once Obama leaves office in 2016.

Among Walberg's ideas discussed Thursday are the expansion of personal health savings accounts, allowing for associated health care plans for small business and allowing people to shop for health care plans outside of their home states. Walberg said he believes implementing these changes would be an easy process if signed into law.

"I can't say how long specifically, but I think it would be very quick, simply because there aren't mandates," Walberg said. "It goes to using systems that are already in place, using health insurance companies that are already in place and allowing expansion beyond that."

Walberg went on to say the only two mandates would be to accept patients with pre-existing conditions and anyone who has kept on their premiums without stoppage would be automatically renewable.

"Those are really the only two quasi-mandates and there's no prohibitions against insurance companies covering the costs if there would be any, to them from having those requirements in place to cover pre-existing and continuous coverage of insurance," Walberg said.

In the short term, Walberg said lawmakers can help people negatively affected by "Obamacare" by passing legislation that would increase the status of full-time employees from 30 hours to 40 hours.

During the meeting, two health insurance providers spoke on a panel and discussed the issues they've had with helping customers get insurance while using the healthcare.gov website.

"It's been extraordinarily unproductive for the medical professions, the professionals, the insurance professionals." said Clint Barrett, owner of Barrett Insurance in Jonesville.

"Everything with Obamacare is driven by 'can we go on to this marketplace website?'"

Barrett said the website's issues have forced him to have numerous meetings with clients to put their information into the system and find what coverage plans are available for them. Barrett said in the past he was able to find the coverage plans more quickly and efficiently than he can with the website. He went on to say that not every experience has been terrible.

"We're here to work with our clients that are sitting across the table from us. I have seen some success stories with Obamacare too. I've seen a number of people who are self-employed who have not been able to pay for insurance in the past," Barrett said.

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