Obamacare is Failing
Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk for a few minutes this morning about the families that are suffering under the false promises of ObamaCare. We are beginning to see this play out all across the country. The ObamaCare failings are very pronounced; and you see them in the communities; and you understand how they are affecting lives.
Now, the supporters of ObamaCare continue to have blinders on about this; and they don't want to admit that the entire premise is a theory, not proven. It was change for the sake of change. It was change for the sake of centralized control. It was change for the sake of the arrogance of the elite making decisions for millions of Americans and determining what kind of health care they were going to be able to access.
We all remember that the press said that the biggest fabrication of the decade was, if you like your doctor, you can keep him. It is all so unfortunate.
I want to look, Mr. Speaker, for just a few minutes at what has happened with these co-ops that are now failing. The failings are very pronounced, and they truly have an imprint and an effect in our communities.
One month before the ObamaCare-funded Oregon co-op announced its failure in bankruptcy, the CEO said she saw a ``long health life in front of us.'' They had a $50 million Federal loan, if you will, and had managed to enroll only 10,000 people. Now the taxpayers are beginning to wonder if that loan is ever going to be repaid.
Take a look at Colorado. In the Colorado co-op, the same story; 72 million taxpayer dollars, and they enrolled 83,000 people. Do the math on what the enrollment alone is costing the American taxpayer, and do the math on what kind of healthcare access could have been if individuals were going straight to the marketplace.
We have heard Kentucky celebrated as being such a success story and the poster child for the success of ObamaCare. Here is the truth: they have $146 million in Federal loans and then another $65 million in an emergency solvency loan. They have 51,000 people in a co-op that is not functioning.
And in Tennessee, where our co-op is going under, $73 million, and they had 27,000 people enrolled.
Now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to say, oh, ObamaCare has been such a success. If you do the math and look at the numbers, I take issue with that. I would not term that a success. I term it a failure.
I wonder if the people in Oregon and Colorado, Kentucky and Tennessee are feeling success as they, once again, find out that simply having an insurance card is not health care. It is access to the queue, if the company is solvent and the queue exists.
Imagine, four States, a collective nearly $500 million for experiments. That is half a billion taxpayer dollars for experiments in health insurance delivery, all before anybody received any mental health help or received a single mammogram or a single child's vaccine.
We know that ObamaCare is too expensive to afford; and, for all too many, it is too expensive to use once they get the insurance. It is proving to be a failure.
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