Lawmaker: ObamaCare will ‘collapse’ around Obama

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) predicted Monday that ObamaCare will fall apart on its own, through a combination of rising healthcare premiums that people are seeing, and the several enforcement delays imposed by the Obama administration.

“Eventually, all of this is going to collapse around them, but they are just enacting so much pain on the American people as we get to that,” she told NewsMax TV on Monday.

{mosads}Blackburn, one of the more vocal opponents of ObamaCare in the House, said the failure of younger, healthier people to sign up for insurance under the law is a major factor that will lead to higher premiums and the collapse of the law.

“They needed young, healthy individuals to choose to pay more, to pay for those that were sick or had the ability to pay less, and it is just not happening,” she said. “So because of that, those policies are just going to fold around them.”

She said some older people are already seeing dramatic premium hikes, as much as 500 percent.

“And then they’re talking to friends and spouses who are in the Medicare program and they’re finding out they’re having to pay high premiums and they’re going, ‘Wait a minute, not any of this is coming together like it was supposed to come together,’ ” she said. “Because of that, I do believe this is going to be the most difficult hurdle for the Obama administration.”

Blackburn predicted that the administration would “keep at it” and try to keep the law intact. But she said Congress would continue to fight the administration’s unilateral efforts to delay parts of the law without input from Congress.

“That’s why we took the actions we did last week with the Enforce Act and a couple of other pieces of legislation… to let us go after the administration when they overstep their bounds,” she said.

Last week, House Republicans passed legislation to delay the individual mandate for five years, a step that the Obama administration said would further undermine the law by letting people escape the requirement to participate by purchasing a health plan.