Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I congratulate the Senator from Wisconsin for his amendment. I look forward to voting on it, this afternoon, I understand.

This is actually the promise that President Obama made: If you like the coverage you have, if you like your health insurance, you can keep it. But, in fact, we know that has not proven to be true.

I know when the Senator from Wisconsin ran for the Senate, one of the primary motivating factors was his own experience with his own daughter. I have heard him tell that story time and again. I know he feels strongly about it, as well as he feels strongly about his constituents who have been harmed as a result of this law, which has not performed as advertised.

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I appreciate getting to hear that story again. I have heard that story a number of times from the Senator from Wisconsin. I think it shows how special this effort is to try to get people the health care they want at a price they can afford and how ObamaCare has done just the opposite. Rather than being part of this false narrative about a war on women, there are a lot of women and young girls who have been harmed by ObamaCare, which has been a disaster.

Of course, I remember being here on Christmas Eve, 7 a.m., 2009, when our Democratic colleagues, then in the majority, had 60 votes and they passed ObamaCare without a single Republican vote. I think that was a terrible mistake. It was a terrible mistake to take something as important to most Americans or virtually to every American--their health care--and totally reform the health care system in a partisan way and one that could not be sustained. Indeed, we have seen in the 5 years since that time that our country's health care system is in complete disarray.

We have all read the headlines that describe the double-digit premium increases and the skyrocketing deductibles that make people wonder why they should buy health insurance in the first place. I guess the answer to that is this: If you don't, under ObamaCare you are going to get penalized. That is the individual mandate that President Obama at one point said he was opposed to when he ran for President in 2008, although I guess he came to love it.

But that is the way the government operates when it mandates what you do. It takes away from your freedom, as the Senator from Wisconsin said, but it also uses coercion and financial penalties to force you to do something you wouldn't naturally do because it is not good for you or your family. You are being forced to buy coverage you don't need at a price you can't afford. So the only way the government makes this function--to the extent it has functioned--is out of coercion, out of penalizing the American people and forcing them to buy something they don't want. So it is no surprise that such a massive program of Federal overreach comes with a major pricetag. This is something that we haven't talked about enough.

In order to pay for ObamaCare, the Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cost taxpayers more than $116 billion a year--$116 billion. Over the next 10 years, that pricetag totals more than $1 trillion in new taxes. Now, I know for most of us we can't even conceive of what that number must be, but that is big. That is huge. It is a huge burden on American taxpayers and hard-working families. One reason people are struggling to pay the premiums for their ObamaCare coverage is because over the last 7 years wages have been basically stagnant. Our economy has been bouncing along the bottom, just barely out of range of a recession. So people are finding their cost of living going up--their price for food, their price for health care. Perhaps the only good news in the last few years has been that the price of gasoline has come down because of unrelated reasons. But people are struggling to make ends meet, hard-working middle-class families who previously had been thriving in this economy.

The bottom line is that ObamaCare has left the American people paying more for their medical needs while reducing access and weakening coverage. The people I work for back home are adamant they want this to stop. So that is the vote we will have tomorrow--to stop this huge government overreach that does not serve the interests of the people whom presumably it was designed to protect and to provide access for.

The phone calls and letters and social media posts and face-to-face meetings that I have had in Texas over the last 5 years tell me how ObamaCare has hurt, not helped, hard-working Texans. Last month I received even more letters from my constituents who are exasperated about their health care plans. I heard from Texans who have lost their doctors and their insurance plans for the same reason that the Senator from Wisconsin mentioned. They no longer covered certain specialties that are outside the network, and that is because they have had to try to find a way to economize. What they have done is they have restricted access to doctors and hospitals.

Then there are the rising premiums. Because of the mandates, you are being forced to buy coverage that you don't need. For example, healthy men are being forced to purchase maternity care. It makes no sense. Young, healthy individuals are being forced to buy coverage to subsidize older Americans.

Then there is the matter of the deductibles. If there is one story that I have heard after another, it is from hospitals in Texas, saying that people are admitted to our hospital but they have such a high deductible, it is as if they are self-insured. Many of them can't afford to the pay the deductibles, so we have to eat it. We have to find a way to provide them health care because we know they won't able to pay their bill, particularly if it is not within the deductible.

One constituent wrote:

We were happy with our insurance, but we didn't get to keep it. We were happy with our doctors, but we didn't keep them.

The same constituent said, ``Our plans to retire early have been sidetracked by the unaffordable cost of healthcare.''

I have also heard from folks who have lost their employer-provided health insurance and are now forced to pay double their previous rate.

One of my constituents wrote:

Like many other companies [mine] dumped its retired employee medical benefits and said go get your own health care insurance. ..... [Before, it] was only $150 a month. Now, under ObamaCare our [insurance] will cost us $366 a month!

That may not seem like a lot of money to a lot of people, but if you are a retired person and you are on fixed income and if you made plans for your future--including your health care--to see your health care premiums more than double is a big deal.

The same person continued: ``I know where you stand on this issue, but wanted you to see another example of how terrible the problem is.''

That is a good word for it: ``terrible.''

I have also heard from other folks back home who are forced to spend countless hours of time and energy researching new plans because their previous insurance was canceled. The President and his allies in this takeover of America's health care system have said to some people who liked their health coverage that it wasn't good enough, so they basically made it illegal to continue to sell it.

One of my constituents wrote and said:

I have to spend my valuable time researching yet again, a plan that meets my healthcare needs and possibly stays within my budget. ..... where is the affordable in the Affordable Care Act?

That is another good question. I think it is useful to understand that ObamaCare is not a topic that Texans or most Americans are simply indifferent about. People care strongly about making this law a thing of the past. My constituents overwhelmingly want this law repealed and replaced with more choices where people can buy the health care they need at a price they can afford. That does not seem like a lot to ask.

With the increasing reports from across the country about how ObamaCare is hurting American families, there should be no doubt about this vote. Although, I predict this will be a party-line vote where all of our Democratic friends who supported ObamaCare are sticking with it to the very end. But it is unsustainable. It will not work. What we would be more productive in doing is trying to work together to come up with what the alternative would be that would provide people more affordable care and the coverage they need.

The American people have made crystal clear--last November, in particular, when they put Republican majorities in both Chambers of Congress--that they want us to do something about this ill-advised, misguided law. I look forward to delivering on our promise to vote to repeal ObamaCare tomorrow evening before we adjourn for the week.

This legislation we are currently considering would eliminate more than $1 trillion in tax increases and will likely save the American people hundreds of billions of dollars in future spending. This is a time when our national debt is $18 trillion plus. All we are doing is adding more and more debt to future generations who someday are going to have to pay it back. Maybe my generation will not be around long enough to have to pay that bill, but the next generation and beyond will.

By repealing ObamaCare, we can craft a better way to provide health care options that actually work for every American at an affordable price. I look forward to getting this bill passed and hopefully providing relief to millions of Americans who are burdened by ObamaCare.

I wish to close by saying a good word about the chairman of the Budget Committee who has been a counselor, adviser, and navigator of sorts to many of us in this challenging procedural exercise known as budget reconciliation. I am incredibly grateful, not only for the good work he did in assisting us in passing the first budget that we have passed since 2009--that is pretty important--but now shepherding us through this very difficult process and helping us as the new majority to keep our promise to the American people to repeal ObamaCare. When we do that and we vote to pass this repeal of ObamaCare tomorrow evening, it will be in large part because of the invaluable contributions made by the chairman of the Budget Committee, the Senator from Wyoming, and his able staff. This has been a team effort. There is no doubt about it, but he has been a leader of that team effort.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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