OPINION: Now it's clear the Affordable Care Act is mis-named

 Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana just filed for a 26 percent increase in premiums for next year.

Democrats say that they want to make an issue of rate increases like this to show the middle class that they are standing up to big corporations.

But these rate increases are a direct result of the Affordable Care Act that they passed.

Republicans need to stop calling it Obamacare and start using its real name. Doing so will show that the legislation has had the opposite effect.

A 26 percent increase in my health-care premium is not very affordable.

The first group into the Democratic White House when Democrats proposed this were the very pharmaceutical companies that Democrats used to demonize. No record of the meeting from the self-proclaimed most transparent administration in history — but what we do know as fact is that those companies left after promising to spend over $100 million on ads promoting this proposal.

(Remember when Democrats urged you to buy your drugs from Canada? Don’t hear that anymore.)

Those ads were placed by Obama’s chief strategists — David Axelrod’s old media firm where his son worked.

In return those pharmaceutical companies continue to make billions in profits — at our expense — as do price gouging not-for-profit hospitals (who also supported the proposal), hospitals that pay nothing in taxes.

The Clintons, the Obamas and Sen. Elizabeth Warren can rail all they want about standing up to Republicans and their big corporate friends who they say are screwing the middle class — but the history of the ACA shows they are the enablers.

Hillary Clinton collects up to $250,000 a speech (her husband collects up to $500,000) from big corporations.

All this tells me that Democrats are now the party of the millionaires who are responsible for increasing my health care premium by 26 percent.

Not affordable in any way. —Joe Novak, Polebridge