Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today we are talking about repealing Obamacare and moving in a completely different direction toward more choices and lower costs for Americans as they search for their health care plans.
I came to the floor yesterday and brought back a memory from 5 1/2 years ago of the President's health care summit, nationally televised all day long at the Blair House, with 36 Members of Congress and the President of the United States. I had a chance, leading off for the Republican speakers that day, to say respectfully to President Obama: Mr. President, this health care plan of yours is going to impose a huge Medicaid unfunded mandate on State budgets, which will raise tuitions and take money from other State programs. It will take money out of Medicare and spend it on something else. It will increase taxes, it will raise premiums, and it will cost jobs. Unfortunately, that all turned out to be true.
The Senator from Georgia, Mr. Isakson, was there, as I was, on that Christmas Eve. It was a cold night when the Democrats had, for a few months, 60 votes, and they rammed through Obamacare in the middle of the night with all Democratic votes, no Republican votes, with us warning what would happen.
Now, I say to Senator Isakson, the premiums in Georgia, I believe will go up 29 percent for some plans.
Mr. ISAKSON. That is correct.
Mr. ALEXANDER. And I wonder if the Senator has been hearing from some of his constituents about their premium increases.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, let me confirm what the Senator from Tennessee just said about that cold night on Christmas Eve 6 years ago when the administration was promising lower premiums, better benefits, and that ObamaCare was going to be the solution for the problems of American families.
As the Senator from Tennessee said, I have gotten letters, as has he. Every Member has gotten letters from people who are having higher premiums, bigger deductibles, and fewer benefits. Let me give an example. A family in Roswell, GA, wrote me, a family of five. They had just been notified that their premium was going from $849 a month to $1,075 a month, a $300 increase, with a deductible of $11,900, an increase of $6,900 in their deductible. The mother, who had a family history of breast cancer, was denied mammograms because of her age, and a young daughter who had a precancerous mole removed was refused reimbursement.
So here is an increase in premiums, a reduction in benefits, and an increase in their deductible. It doesn't make any sense, but it is all because of the mandates of the ObamaCare law.
Secondly, a young couple in Smyrna, GA, wanted to plan for their retirement and start saving early in their early years of productivity. They recently received a notice from their insurance company that their premium was going from $607 a month to $1,379 a month--over a 100-percent increase. Where is that money coming from? They are having to reduce their savings for retirement just to pay the ObamaCare premium and get less of a benefit because their deductible is going from $2,000 to $4,000.
The promise of lower cost health care and better benefits was exactly wrong and what the American people were promised was wrong. I am proud that Mr. Enzi, the Senator from Tennessee, and others who have led this reconciliation vote to repeal ObamaCare have done so. It is time the American people got the truth--better coverage, lower costs, but do it the old-fashioned way with a private competitive system.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Georgia for his leadership on the HELP Committee on which all of us serve.
One of the newer members of the HELP Committee brings a lot of expertise: Senator Cassidy from Louisiana. He wasn't there, at least not in the Senate, on the night Obamacare passed, but he has written forcefully about the fact that while premiums have been going up, something else was going down, and that is family incomes because of the 30-hour work week. Senator Cassidy had an article in Forbes magazine in 2014 that pointed out the impact of the 30-hour work week in Obamacare and how that was hurting working families.
Mr. CASSIDY. I say to Senator Alexander, one of the ironies of this is that it was promoted as a way to help lower income families make ends meet better. But if you require employers to provide insurance to low-wage workers, the predictable response of an employer who has thin margins is to actually convert those full-time workers to part-time workers. This doesn't happen for the CEO or for the CEO's lieutenants, and it doesn't happen for middle management. The folks it happens most to are those lower paid workers.
I once went grocery shopping in Baton Rouge, and a woman rung me up. The next day my wife sent me to another store to get something else at another store. The same woman was ringing me up. I said: I just saw you at that store, but now I see you at this store. She said--I am paraphrasing--my first employer reduced my hours, so now I have had to take a second job to make ends meet.
Now, that is the personal story. But what the labor statistics show is that since the recession has technically ended, the hours worked per week have recovered for higher income workers, but as for the lower income workers, they have continued to suffer. The most vulnerable have been the most affected in terms of hours worked, but it is not just the most vulnerable, it is also the middle class.
The New York Times wrote an article 2 weeks ago. The headline says it all:
``Many Say High Deductibles Make Their Health Law Insurance All But Useless.'' They quote a gentleman, David Reines from New Jersey. He is 60 years old. He said:
The deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the doctor. ..... We have insurance, but can't afford to use it.
So it is the middle-income worker who also has a policy which previously would have allowed him or her to go to the doctor. Now they can't because the way ObamaCare is so structured is that it is too expensive for that out-of-pocket first exposure.
Mr. ALEXANDER. What the Senator is saying, if I hear him right, is that in the worst of circumstances, the effect of Obamacare on some of the people he is talking with means they are working less hours, so they have less money. Their insurance premium is higher, and so is their deductible. That is the effect.
Mr. CASSIDY. When it comes to insurance premiums, you can't make this up.
This is a fellow from Homewood, LA. His first name is Mark; we scratched out his last name. This is his letter from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana informing him that his policy, which had previously been $207 per month, was going up in 2016 to $961 per month. His policy, which had been roughly $2,400 a year, is going up to $11,500 a year. And this is because of the Affordable Care Act--the Unaffordable Care Act.
Mr. ALEXANDER. The essential problem with Obamacare for people who buy individual insurance, it seems to me, I say to Senator Isakson, is that Washington tells you what insurance to buy.
I think of a woman named Emilie in Middle Tennessee who has lupus and who had a policy she could afford. It had modest benefits and it didn't cost very much, but it fit her needs, but Obamacare canceled that policy. When she went online to find another policy under Obamacare, her costs went up from $100 to $400 a month. I guess the Senator has heard stories like that as well in Georgia.
Mr. ISAKSON. All the time, because what happened with ObamaCare is the following: People who had insurance they could afford and who had bought coverage they needed were forced to buy coverage they didn't need because of the mandates in ObamaCare in terms of what had to be included. So it forced more coverage that you didn't need, which raised the premiums you paid. So you end up paying more and getting less, and it was the mandates of ObamaCare that did it.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Senator Cassidy, of course, has a unique perspective on this as a practicing physician. I think he still practices some--as much as he can within the Senate rules--but he sees patients regularly. I ask Senator Cassidy, what was the effect of this new health care law 5 1/2 years ago on the ability of patients to choose their own physicians?
Mr. CASSIDY. The way the market has responded, in order to make insurance affordable despite the mandates, is there are so-called narrow networks. So someone signs up for the most affordable policy they can get. It turns out that the doctor they previously saw is not on this plan. So the narrow network is going to be just a small set of doctors. The specialists may be in another town; one hospital, not all hospitals. And patients are unfamiliar with this. They did not expect it. But that was their only affordable option. The mandates have driven up the costs so much.
By the way, going back to the letter you got about the mandated benefits, in my recent campaign, I had a woman walk up to me, and she said: My name is Tina, and I am angry. I had a hysterectomy. I am 56 years old and I have no children. My husband and I are paying $500 more per month for insurance, which we cannot afford, and I am paying for pediatric dentistry, and I am paying for obstetrical services.
She had had a hysterectomy, was 56 years old, and had no children.
Another woman--she was 58 and her husband was 57--told me: The only reason I would need obstetrical services, which I am forced to buy, is if my name is Sarah and my husband is Abraham, but that is not the case.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Senator Isakson, before he came to the Senate, was a small businessman in Georgia.
Probably the largest employer in our country is the hospitality industry--restaurants, hotels, that sort of thing, employing many young people, many minority people. I met with a number of restaurant owners, who told me after Obamacare passed that because of the costs of that insurance to the company, their goal would be to reduce the number of employees from 90 to 70. So Obamacare costs jobs. Did the Senator have that kind of experience in Georgia as well?
Mr. ISAKSON. Not only did it cost jobs, but it forced many people who had full-time jobs into part-time jobs because of the mandates. Small business got hurt and their employees got hurt.
The mandates of ObamaCare for coverage, the mandates for taxation, and the mandates for deductibles all contributed to the increasing costs of ObamaCare and made health care more out of reach than more accessible.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Memphis is proud of the fact that it is a center for medical device innovation. Some of the leading medical device companies in the world are located in Memphis, TN. The Obamacare bill--part of its trillion dollars in new taxes included a medical device tax which put an especially onerous tax on the gross income of medical devices companies, causing the President in Costa Rica to put up signs saying ``Welcome to Costa Rica'' to medical device companies.
I wonder if in Louisiana or Georgia you had any experience with the impact of the medical device tax on your constituents?
Mr. CASSIDY. There is a fellow who started a medical device startup in New Orleans, and he was saying that he had an offer to move his business to Panama because a major portion of his market is overseas.
So the medical device tax is, of course, a tax upon the gross of a business. If he moves overseas to Panama, taking those jobs with him, and continues to sell internationally and not pay tax on that but is taxed only on that which he brings back to the United States, then he is obviously reducing his tax burden. Those are high-paying, white-collar jobs in New Orleans, a city recovering from Katrina. If the power to tax is the power to destroy, this tax has the power to destroy the ability of this gentleman to continue to expand in New Orleans.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I say to Senator Isakson, I recall one of the most vigorous debates we had 5 1/2 years ago was first the President saying: We won't touch Medicare. Next thing you know, they took $700 billion out of Medicare to spend on new programs, at a time when the Medicare trustees, whose job it is to tell us things like this, said: The program is going to go broke unless we do something about it. We were saying: If you are going to take money away from grandma's Medicare, you better spend it on grandma. But they didn't. It impacted Medicare recipients in Georgia, Tennessee, and Louisiana.
Mr. ISAKSON. Well, the President basically robbed Peter to pay Paul. He robbed the beneficiaries of Medicare benefits and then took the money and spent it on somebody else. So the person who had the benefits didn't have the benefits any longer.
The problem with this entire deal is it was a charade. Promises were made that if you like your policy, you can keep it. That turned out to be wrong. Premiums were going to go down. That turned out to be wrong. If you couldn't get insurance, you would be able to get insurance. Well, that ended up being true in part, but it became something known as a bronze policy. Do you know what a bronze policy is? It was a policy that gave you coverage, but the deductible was so big, you couldn't get to the coverage. So every time there was a promise, it was a broken promise, an increased cost, and less accessibility to coverage.
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Mr. ALEXANDER. Six minutes remaining.
We have heard a lot in the news about co-ops. Co-ops were an invention of Obamacare that were designed to provide health care to many Americans. I know that in South Carolina, for example--closure of these co-ops for 67,000 South Carolinians and 27,000 Tennesseans--means that suddenly they have to find new coverage. I wonder if either in Louisiana or Georgia, you have had any experience with the new co-ops in Obamacare?
Mr. CASSIDY. Louisiana's co-op failed. It attempted to lower costs with a skinny network, but ultimately it still could not compete.
If I may point out, we have talked about how the low-wage worker has had her opportunity diminished by the law. We discussed how the middle-class family, who oftentimes had insurance they were told they could keep, lost it, and now they have a deductible of $3,000, which they say makes the insurance something they cannot afford. We are speaking about the U.S. taxpayer. The U.S. taxpayer has put billions of dollars toward these co-ops. There is some evidence that the administration continued to put money into them even when they knew they were going to fail, and yet now they are failing--over half and supposedly more slated to do so. It isn't just the low-wage worker and the middle-class family; it is all the taxpayers who have taken a hit for promises made but promises broken.
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Mr. ALEXANDER. During the debate 5 1/2 years ago at the health care summit at the Blair House, our Democratic friends said: Well, when are you Republicans going to come up with a big, comprehensive plan? My answer to them was: If you are waiting for Senator McConnell to roll a wheelbarrow onto the Senate floor with a 2,700 page McConnell-care bill, you are going to be waiting until the sky turns purple because we don't believe in that. We don't think we are wise enough in Washington, DC, to write a comprehensive plan for everything about the American health care for all the people in this country.
Instead, what we proposed to do--and we proposed it over and over again--was to move step by step in a different direction toward more choices, more freedom, and lower costs. In fact, I counted it up, and 173 times in the Congressional Record in the year 2009, we Republicans laid out our plans step by step toward those causes, steps like the step Senator Scott from South Carolina took in a bipartisan way just this year to give States the ability to set the rates for the kind of insurance small businesses could buy and avoid an 18-percent increase in premiums. Those are the kinds of steps we would take in a different direction to give the American people those options.
Our time for the colloquy has expired. I thank the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Isakson, and the Senator from Louisiana, Mr. Cassidy. We Republicans said 5 1/2 years ago that premiums would go up, taxes would go up, jobs would be lost, and that State budgets would be burdened by Medicaid, and all that turned out to be true, unfortunately.
The President said: If you like your plan, you can keep it. That turned out to be untrue, unfortunately.
We are prepared to go in a different direction--more choices, more freedom, lower costs--but first, this week we are going to repeal Obamacare, which has caused such problems for the American people, and then we will head in a different direction.
I thank the Presiding Officer.
I yield the floor.
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