The most popular insurer in President Obama’s home state — Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois — is seeking premium hikes ranging from 23 percent to 45 percent for individual health care plans on the state’s Obamacare exchange. The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois defended its proposal by calling it “a sustainable way” to continue providing coverage and panning other insurers that “have chosen to exit the market.”

Even the most partisan Democrats acknowledge Obamacare is unsustainable. Nancy-Ann DeParle, who directed the White House’s Office of Health Reform in 2009 and 2010, said last week, “We all know that after this election, after Hillary Clinton is elected, something will break the fever and they’ll realize that it is in their best interest to go and ahead expand.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan [and] Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell … should make clear they have no intention of helping Hillary Clinton save Obamacare.

“The continued failure of Obamacare is one of the most important and least discussed issues of the presidential campaign,” Heritage Action’s vice president Dan Holler said. “A Republican Congress will not pass an expansion of Obamacare or Hillary Clinton’s dream of a public option. It is time for her to come to terms with the law’s failure and inevitable collapse, and put forward a plan to give individuals and families the freedom to make health care decisions that’s right for them.

The Republican Party’s 2016 platform explicitly rejects any attempt to expand Obamacare:

“Any honest agenda for improving health care must start with repeal of the dishonestly named Affordable Care Act of 2010: Obamacare. It weighs like the dead hand of the past upon American medicine. It imposed a Euro-style bureaucracy to manage its unworkable, budget-busting, conflicting provisions.”

The House Republican’s “better way” agenda on health care was equally direct:

“This law cannot be fixed. Its knot of regulations, taxes, and mandates cannot be untangled. We need a clean start in order to pursue the patient-centered reforms the American people deserve.”

In his convention speech, Donald Trump was similarly blunt, simply stating that “We will repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare.”

Can Clinton and her team overcome that opposition? The liberal Talking Points Memo (TPM) explains their thinking:

“But Clinton advisers see something specific about the politician herself, and the general election battle she will be fighting in the next few months, that will make bipartisan cooperation on incremental changes more possible. They said that because Obamacare hasn’t been a central issue in Donald Trump’s campaign, it is a heading towards a depoliticization.”

“Health care, hopefully, because it is not necessarily in the headlights, will have less heat imposed upon it and we can have some legitimate, thoughtful conversations on delivery reform, on how we restructure [Obamacare] over a period of time and how we can provide flexibility in appropriate ways to the states,” Clinton health care adviser Chris Jennings told TPM.

[lz_related_box id=”166822″]

House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Republican politicians at every level should make clear they have no intention of helping Hillary Clinton save Obamacare — should she win.

Who do you think would win the Presidency?

By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from LifeZette, occasional offers from our partners and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement.

Earlier this year, The Heritage Foundation gave the top 10 reasons why Obamacare’s future is uncertain:

1.) Despite the president’s repeated promises, rising health insurance premiums continue to burden businesses and families.

2.) Obamacare generates big and surprising out-of-pocket costs.

3.) Obamacare reduces insurance competition and consumer choice.

4.) Obamacare destroys jobs and discourages employment.

5.) The overall health care cost curve is “bending” upward.

6.) Obamacare imposes major tax increases on America’s middle class.

7.) Medicare payment cuts threaten seniors’ future access to care.

8.) Obamacare increases deficits and debt.

9.) Obamacare forces Americans, in direct violation of their rights of conscience, to fund abortion through their own tax dollars.

10.) Obamacare imposes arbitrary rules and costly mandates.

In a talking point sure to be used in some fashion by the Clinton campaign, an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation dismisses the projected 2017 rate increases as “a one-time market correction rather than a trend.”

Of course, that is little comfort for individuals and families who are no longer able to buy cheap plans with low premiums thanks to Obamacare.