Contact: Caroline Rabbitt (202)224-2353

Washington, D.C.- Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today released the following statement on Arkansas's medical rate filling requests for 2017:

"Today, Arkansans received the grim news that they'll pay up to 24 percent more for individual market health insurance-a massive increase that will have a devastating impact on families and individuals across the state. Regrettably, this news is little surprising given the repeated failures of Obamacare over the last six years. In 2010, President Obama stood before the American people and promised that under Obamacare, ‘if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,' that healthcare premiums would drop, and that the individual market would stabilize. But as today's announcement illustrates, everything President Obama said about Obamacare has proven false.

"The irony is Obamacare penalizes Arkansans who can no longer afford care that Obamacare has made unaffordable. We must save Arkansans from the worst effects of this fatally flawed law and repeal Obamacare immediately. And we should replace it with a better, patient-centered approach that truly increases access, reduces costs, and puts patients and doctors in charge of care-not Washington bureaucrats."