Karen Harrington Lashes Out at Wasserman-Schultz on Health Care

Pointing to a Wall Street Journal article that states that some private health-care plans are going to raise their premium fees, Republican congressional candidate Karen Harrington is pointing the blame at her opponent U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Democrats in Washington who supported new federal health-care laws backed by President Barack Obama.

"My own small business has our employee health insurance policy thru AvMed, an insurance carrier that serves South Florida, and they've just increased their rates for my employees by 30 percent, without changing the plan in any way," said Harrington on Wednesday afternoon. "My carrier is already laboring under Obamacare's harmful mandates, and in order to keep my employees' health insurance in place, I've been unable to give them raises and vacation pay. My business is unable to hire additional staff, and we're operating with 20 percent less staff than we did three years ago. This is a common refrain of small businesses located throughout South Florida that are being directly harmed by the recklessness of our federal government's fiscal policies as well as Obamacare.

"Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was one of the most aggressive supporters of Obamacare, and she directly worked against common sense and the will of the American people, added Harrington. She engineered a government takeover of the health care and health insurance systems -- you only need to look at the new layers of government bureaucracy that are needed to administer and enforce this law. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was never interested in a true reform of the health care system that would have encouraged free market competition, lowered health care costs and expanded access to the system. We need to defund and repeal Obamacare, and we need to replace Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in November for failing to act in the best interests of her constituents, time and time again.