Rep. Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, said he’s had to drop his health care coverage because Obamacare has made it too expensive.
“Other people are going to see what I did when I looked into health insurance for my wife and me — that the deductible rate, it doubled, about $3,000 to $6,000, and our policy was going to go from about $300 to about $1,500 a month,” he said during a local radio interview in his home state.
“I actually don’t have insurance right now, so thank you very much, Obamacare,” Mr. Gohmert said during the interview, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Mr. Gohmert said he’ll instead pay the penalty tax, about 1 percent of his annual $174,000 congressional income.
“I lost my health care,” he said. “I liked it OK, but I didn’t get to keep it. I couldn’t afford to go up four or five times what I was paying and double my deductible, and so I’m better off with just setting money aside for health care and paying the penalty.”
Health care officials say the congressman is taking a big risk, given his age, 60, as well as his wife’s, 59.
“By not obtaining insurance, you are just rolling the dice, gambling that you are not going to get sick or going to get hit by a car,” Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute, told The Dallas Morning News.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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