We have limited information about Bette - she is a woman who lives in Spokane, Washington - but that's enough to do some research. We don't know her age, so I used the worst-case (for premiums) of 64, and while we don't know her marital/family status, the statement offered was 'her premiums' so I'll first look at her cost as a single 64-year-old woman living in Spokane.
Here is what the excellent Washington exchange gave me:
Hmmm, it's hard to see that rate as $700 higher.
Well, what if Bette wants a Gold plan?
Wow! She's still paying less than the total claimed increase! BTW, I used an income figure ($70,000) which is above the cut-off for any subsidy, to keep that out of the mix.
Well, what if Bette is married?
We now know enough to state that this claim makes no sense at all. If Bette is single, she can get a Gold plan for less than $700, and if she's married she would have to have been paying less than $136 per month for health insurance for 2 64-year-old people on the individual market - an obvious impossibility.
I ran the worst-case scenario: 64, no subsidy. What happens when parameters change?
Younger? Rates go down. At age 44, Bette pays $194/mo. for the same AmBetter Bronze policy in the first graphic above.
Lower income? Below $46,000/yr, a subsidy of at least $250/mo kicks in. And if Bette is married, look what happens to that subsidy at $62,000/yr income:
Amazing! That subsidy makes even a Gold plan cost a net of $595.
More dependents? That raises the subsidy level, and it persists to higher income levels. It's calculated as a percentage of the poverty level, which increases with each dependent.
More income? The premiums don't increase.
So this claim just doesn't make sense no matter how hard I work the numbers. I suspect Politico would award it some Pinochios!
One other possibility is that Bette was one of about 8,000 Washington residents who, early in October, were given incorrect expected premium amounts due to a faulty calculator on the Washington Obamacare exchange web-site. Here's a story about that:
There's a couple of problems with believing Bette was caught up in this:
1. It only involved subsidy calculations, and we already proved that if Bette was entitled to a subsidy, there's no way she could have had to pay $700 MORE than she had paid pre-ACA.
2. The problem got fixed well before anyone had to actually pay anything.
3. This wouldn't have been an actual premium increase.
Sorry, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, your story doesn't pass the smell test, and certainly doesn't withstand any level of detailed analysis.
As I said back in October: Keep the faith, folks. Obamacare is working!
Final note: How about Calgary Cruz still beating his dead horse about '5 million people who had their insurance policies cancelled because of Obamacare'? You'd think that if that had actually happened, he'd be able to find at least ONE victim to tell his story.
Cheers.
UPDATE - Bette's been found! h/t to Bethesda 1971 in the comments for finding much of this.
NOTE: there is a lot of speculation below, because until some intrepid reporter (are you reading this, Rachel???) ferrets out the REAL Bette we can only read the tea leaves.
Bette is probably Bette (or possibly Betty) Grenier, who along with her husband Don appear to be co-presidents of Pro-Roofing, Incin Spokane.
Here's a reference link to the company.
Bette first surfaced in a letter from CMR dated 11/5/13:
As I travel the Congressional district during the time the Affordable Care Act is being rolled out, I hear a consistent concern: More people are being hurt than helped.
It’s about the Meenach family, who will be pushed into the state health care exchanges, where they could lose benefits like dental and vision and no longer be able to see the family doctor that has treated them for years.
It’s about Bette Grenier, who can’t afford the increased payments and is currently uninsured because of Obamacare.
Now, the first problem here is figuring out how, on 11/5/13, before Obamacare insurance policies were even effective, Bette could possibly be 'uninsured because of Obamacare'. Her existing policy would still have been in effect. So already my ACA-dar starts beeping.
OK, so we think Bette's married, (or Don could be her son or brother) so her worst-case scenario is the third policy graphic above, $836/mo for a Bronze plan for herself and her husband, which means she must have been getting comparable insurance (for her complaint about Obamacare to be valid) for about $136/mo. I think I'd need to see concrete proof of that before I'd believe it.
The company profile linked above leads us to believe that it employs about 10 people and does around $500,000 of business per year, although I've found this type of site to be routinely inaccurate. Neither of those numbers really matters here.
Others have suggested that Bette may have been talking about a Silver or Gold plan with higher premiums, but you can't say 'I can't afford insurance' and complain about the premiums if you're not talking about the cheapest Bronze plan. To put it in 'Tom Perkins' terms, you can't complain about not being able to afford a wristwatch, and then specify it has to be a Rolex.
So even with this new information/speculation, I stand by my earlier analysis: this claim doesn't ring true.
But I have an open mind, so if anyone has better information, please bring it forward.
And maybe I'll tune into Faux Noows to get the hot skinny...... or maybe not!
Cheers.
 UPDATE 2: BIG h/t to  chazbritfield for finding these gems, apparently written by Bette Grenier herself on Facebook:
I am livid to be told that I am to stupid to understand the coverage I had. Unlike Congress who did not read the bill before voting for it I did read my policy and I liked it. Now It has been cancelled and the choices I have been given I happen to hate, which aren't many. Not only that my premiums have doubled from 532.00 a month to over 1000.00 a month for my husband and I. The reason for the cancellation was my policy did not fulfill the GOVERNMENT MANDATES not that the evil insurance companies want to make my life miserable by sucking all my money from me, which is what Obamacare is doing to us.
 October 30, 2013 at 9:57am
And on Neil Cavuto's web-page:
Thanks to Obamas horrible economic policies which tanked our business of over 20 yrs my husband had to go on disability at age 60 because he has emphesema and can no longer do all the work our contracting business demanded and we can't find any help who would do all the work he use to do and keep the long hrs he did and still try to make a profit. Oh I forgot we are not suppose to make a profit. So yes we are one of the victims thanks to Obama, but support Romney. I think there are alot of us like that. I would be thrilled if our business was doing as well as it did in 2009. We then woulddn't need any govt. help.
 September 18, 2012 at 4:28pm
So let's deconstruct this..... with the assumption that these are legitimate posts.
First off, what kind of health insurance was she getting for $532... with a 61-year-old husband suffering from emphysema?
Second, even accepting that her premium 'doubled from 532 to over 1000', that's not 'almost $700' - but that's nit-picking on my part.
More important is that she could have at least equaled her previous coverage for about $800 - a Bronze plan.
Now let's look at her second post, where she blames President Obama for tanking her business in 2012. Leaving out the blame part, doesn't it seem that if her business 'tanked', she and her husband would have income less than $62,000 per year? That's important, because it would put them into the subsidy range, and a subsidized Bronze policy would cost them a net of about $100/mo.
So I think we're getting an increasingly focused look at CMR's Bette, and  lot of our suspicions are being realized.
And while I have sympathy for her for her business tanking and her husband's health problems, I wonder how long her sick husband would have been able to keep his pre-ACA policy?
And finally, given that she claims she was uninsured on 11/5/13 in the letter to CMR - and we know that this could not have been caused by ACA - could she have been uninsured due to her husband's medical condition.... and only was even able to GET insurance because of ACA?
Thanks to all of the commenters - I really enjoy discussing these kinds of topics with our community. And special thanks to the posters whose comments I have used in my updates without remembering where I read them - my apologies for not being organized enough to give you credit.
Cheers.
UPDATE 3: BETTE SPEAKS!!
h/t to wa ma for finding this story in the Spokane news. Let's unpack some excerpts:
But the “nearly $700 per month” increase in her premium that McMorris Rodgers cited in Tuesday night’s GOP response to the State of the Union address was based on the priciest option, a $1,200-a-month replacement plan that was pitched by Asuris Northwest to Grenier and her husband, Don.
OK, right of the bat we know she lied. The $1,200 policy is a Gold policy, high premium, low deductible, low OOP, low or no co-pay. That's nowhere close to a comparable replacement for her $10,000 deductible catastrophic 'junk' policy.
The carrier also offered a less expensive, $1,052-per-month option in lieu of their soon-to-be-discontinued catastrophic coverage plan. And, Grenier acknowledged the couple probably could have shaved another $100 a month off the replacement policy costs by purchasing them from the state’s online portal, the Health Plan Finder website, but they chose to avoid the government health exchanges.
“I wouldn’t go on that Obama website at all,” said Grenier, 58, who lives in the Chattaroy area and owns a roofing company with her husband. “We liked our old plan. It worked for us, but they can’t offer it anymore.”
Now we know her carrier was scamming her as well, and that Bette consciously chose ideologically driven ignorance by refusing to even go LOOK at what might have been available on the exchange.
Fed up with what they considered limited, pricey choices, she said she and her husband have decided to go without coverage.
“I know some people seem to be getting good deals, but we’re not,” Grenier said. “I have a friend – she and I fight about this stuff all the time – and she got a great deal: $129 a month.”
That doesn't match up with her statement on Neil Cavuto's web site had to go on disability at age 60 because he has emphesema ...' and, as YellerDog pointed out in his excellent comment, when you go on SS disability, it includes medical.
And we also have Bette admit that she has a friend who got health insurance for $129/mo.
Also - totally unbelievably, to me - Bette claims that she and her SICK husband have decided to live without any health insurance at all. As we all know, that means that not only will they have to foot ALL of their medical expenses (out of their diminished income), they will have to pay the TAX PENALTY of 1% of that diminished income.
The real tragedy here is that it looks more and more like Bette and her husband (if he actually needs it) would at the very least be able to get a subsidy, and even possibly, depending on their actual income, be eligible for insurance at no cost at all.
It's one thing to display your foolish pride all over the place, but to damage your health and quite possibly destroy your family's finances and your piece of the American Dream due to ideologically-fueled willfull ignorance...... well, I think that speaks for itself.
We wondered about Bette, looked for her, found traces of her, found her, and now she speaks to us herself, confirming our suspicions and exposing her lies and Cathy McMorris Rodgers foolishness.
Mission accomplished! Thanks to everyone who has participated and assisted in this investigation.