Military Contruction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, we are in the beginning stages of open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act, which extends through January 31, 2016. I wanted to briefly come to the floor today to make sure the body knows that over the course of the next 2 1/2 months their constituents will have an opportunity to save hundreds if not thousands of dollars by shopping around and finding the most affordable plan available to them but to also make everyone aware that despite the overwhelming success of the Affordable Care Act--the uninsured rate in this country has dropped by 30 percent since its inception only a few years ago--there are still some who have not gone onto the exchanges and found a plan that can bring them into the ranks of those who now have affordable insurance for the first time.

This is an important period for people across this country, but it is also a moment for us to reflect on what has happened over the course of the last 2 years, especially given all of those who were naysayers, all those who predicted the country would fall apart or at the very least the health care economy would fall apart after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Of course, the exact opposite has happened.

We have seen a dramatic reduction in the number of people who don't have insurance. We have seen people be able to gain enormous savings on the amount of money they spend on health care.

We have seen the amount of money the Federal Government spends on health care dramatically reduced--a $1.2 trillion savings over the baseline when the ACA was passed, the amount of money the Federal Government is projecting to save over a 10-year period of time.

We have seen quality get better. Indicators--from hospital readmissions to infection rates--are all going in positive trendlines because, of course, the Affordable Care Act isn't just about getting people access to affordable care, it is also about transforming our payment system away from one that just bases our reimbursement system on the amount of medicine practiced to one that is actually rewarding the quality and outcomes that are gleaned as a part of our health care system.

It is a triple whammy. More people have access to affordable care; we are spending less money than we had planned to spend, by dramatic numbers, from the Federal perspective; and we are getting better quality outcomes.

Lots of us have ideas about how we can improve the Affordable Care Act, and we hope that with the legislative fights behind us and with the judicial fights largely behind us, we can now focus on ways to perfect this law. But there is no question that it is returning enormous benefits to people across this country.

Here is just another quick way to look at it. As shown here, this is the percentage of uninsured by county across the country. Here is 2013. You can see that in almost every county, we have north of 16 percent uninsured. But look how quickly these numbers change. Look how quickly almost every county, at least in the sort of vast swath of territory from the Northwest across to the Northeast, moves down to 2015, where we have majority sections of the country with close to 10 percent uninsured--a 30-percent national reduction in the number of people without insurance. We still have these big gaps where people are in the coverage gap, people who are making so little money that they don't qualify for Medicaid but also can't get into the subsidies, but this is enormous progress all across the country. We can make more progress, and a lot of that comes through consumers being educated during this open enrollment period as to the choices in front of them.

Here are some stunning numbers. Eighty-six percent of current enrollees--people who are on Affordable Care Act plans today--can find a lower premium plan at the same level before tax credits by returning to the marketplace to shop for coverage. If every consumer in the country went back and shopped for the lowest cost premium plan at the same level, the total savings across the country would be $4.5 billion. The average consumer--let's say you bought a silver plan last year and you decided to shop for a better deal this year--can save about $52 a month. That results in a savings of about $625 a year. So shopping can save you money.

You might be satisfied with your plan--and the satisfaction numbers are pretty remarkable. Seventy-five percent of people who are on the exchange today report being wholly satisfied with their plan, which is, frankly, a higher satisfaction level than for those who are on private insurance outside of the exchanges. But even if you are satisfied, go back and look at the plans that are available to you. You can find a plan that will get you the same coverage for lower costs. Let's make sure people are getting that return on their investment.

The good news is that there is more choice out there than ever before. Every year since the inception of the Affordable Care Act, plans have been added to these State-based and Federal exchanges. The average number of issuers on an exchange was 8 in 2013 and then 9 in 2014 and then 10 in 2015. So choice for the average consumer is increasing. Now, there are certain areas in which choices maybe stayed the same or maybe in some areas choices have been reduced, but on average across the country, you have more choices today than you did before, so there is no excuse not to go back out and try to find a plan that saves you some money.

In Connecticut, we are probably the poster child for effective implementation of the Affordable Care Act. We are a small State. We have a congressional delegation of only five in the House of Representatives. Yet we have had 700,000 Connecticut residents who have obtained health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, either on the exchange or on Medicaid. We have gone from an 8-percent uninsured rate--so we were already on the low end--down to a 3.8-percent uninsured rate. That is a remarkable number over the course of just a few years. We only have so much progress we can make when we have under 4 percent uninsured, but we have a goal of putting 10 to 20,000 people on the Affordable Care Act over the course of this open enrollment period.

Nationally, because we have made so much progress, the goals are going to be modest compared to years past as well, but the point of coming down to the floor today is to say that at this point in the implementation, when we have made such great progress, we want to continue to try to kick down the uninsured rate. But the real benefit in open enrollment is going to come not simply by reducing the number of people without insurance but by making sure that everybody is on the plan that best represents their financial and medical needs. Again, that number--across the country, $4.5 billion could be saved between now and the end of January--is pretty remarkable.

This Senator has been on the floor a number of times, along with my colleagues, to talk about the simple premise that despite all of those who have been rooting for the Affordable Care Act to fail, it has worked. It has worked from an empirical basis and an anecdotal basis. The statistics don't lie. There are dramatic reductions in the number of people without insurance, dramatic reductions in the pace of health care inflation, and dramatic improvement in the quality of medicine being practiced across the country.

We all have stories of individuals from our State whose lives have been transformed by this act. There are parents who no longer have to worry about their children being locked into a future dictated by their illness, cancer patients who now know they are going to be able to have access to an affordable product and will never be denied access to health care just because of their illness, and taxpayers who see a trajectory of health care spending that is not going to bankrupt this country as fast as it would have had we not put changes inside this act.

So open enrollment is open until January 31, 2016. I encourage all my Republican and Democratic colleagues to get the word out about this. Everyone has constituents who can benefit. Whether or not you support the Affordable Care Act, it is the law of the land and your constituents can benefit from it. We should all be out there talking about the potential for our constituents collectively to save almost $5 billion if they shop on Affordable Care Act exchanges between now and the end of January.

Thank you.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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