(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s two Republican Senators voted for the health care bill Thursday they say will lower health care costs, but the bill was blocked by Democrats. Democrats want to extend the Affordable Care Act, but Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says that would be too expensive. “I can tell you what they should not be happy with, and that is the fact that Obamacare has driven costs up for every single American,” she says. “And what our plan does as Republicans, it provides those subsidy payments directly to our Americans directly to them, to invest. In health savings accounts to bring those premium costs down.” Ernst says there is no transparency for insurance companies getting subsidies under Obamcare.

“Anytime you’re subsidizing an activity from the federal government, it actually raises the cost because those companies know that they can charge more and the government’s going to pay for it,” she says. Ernst says the Republican plan makes things more transparent and the insurance market more competitive. “We have found a huge amount of fraud within this Obamacare expanded subsidies market. We want accountability and the Democrats have said ‘no, we don’t care about fraud’, we want it to stay exactly the same way it is. And if we continue to do that, folks, I guarantee those rates are going to keep going up and up and up,” Ernst says.

Ernst says there is talk of another government shutdown in January if an Obamacare extension fails to pass. She says that won’t be Republicans’ fault, and we found out with the recent shut down it’s costly.”It cost our taxpayers over 12 billion dollars, 12 billion dollars in payments that we had to make for employees who were not at work,” she says. Iowa’s other Senator, Chuck Grassley also voted for the plan, saying it would fix a broken health care system.