Obamacare

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, last year the Presiding Officer and I and a number of us went out to the folks in our great States and we promised that if we were elected into a majority, we would do everything we could to repeal and replace ObamaCare. The process the American people are going to witness over the next 24 hours is our fulfillment of that promise.

It will take 51 votes to send a bill to the President's desk that repeals the most egregious provisions of ObamaCare. Once we do that, we can begin to start the process of addressing the legitimate health care problems instead of an option that has made the problems worse. It is a system that will control costs and put patients first. It is a system that puts choice first. It is a system that puts quality ahead of partisan politics.

This will be an open process that we will go through tomorrow, and that is the way it should be. That means it will require some tough votes. Many of my friends on the right may not particularly like or enjoy the amendments that will be offered and then voted on, but I, for one, when confronted with a vote I may otherwise like to support--if I feel it prevents us from moving forward and being successful in sending this bill to the President's desk, then I am prepared to make those tough votes to be absolutely certain we fulfill that fundamental promise of repealing ObamaCare.

However, in the end, this is about doing everything we can to keep our promise to the American people. While we in Congress will put our conscience over politics--if we do--the President seems to put politics over what I believe he and many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know is a failed policy. This is exactly the underlying failure of ObamaCare. It was a never-ending list of promises and assurances that have not and never will be realized.

We all remember the same promise we heard over and over again from the President: If you like your health care, you can keep it. If you like your doctors, you can keep them. That has absolutely not happened in my great State of North Carolina, and I would daresay it hasn't happened across the Nation. Millions of Americans were kicked off their plans and given a set of alternatives that were drastically more expensive. They were told they could no longer see the doctors they had visited and trusted for years.

In North Carolina alone, we had over 470,000 cancellation notices. When they promised that if you liked your health care plan, you could keep it, there was a little asterisk there, and the asterisk was, you can keep it if the Federal Government determines that a policy you are satisfied with, they are satisfied with. That is how they say they kept their promise, but it was an empty promise and they haven't kept it.

We also remember the President's promises to make health care more affordable, boasting that ObamaCare would reduce premiums by $2,500. That hasn't happened either. In North Carolina, during the first full year of the exchange rollout, premium prices increased and outpaced the increases in wages and inflation. The average home is spending more on health care and getting less in their paycheck.

The premium prices in the individual insurance market increased by 147 percent--147 percent. This leads to the problem of people having insurance they can't afford to use because they can't afford their deductible or their copay. It has created real-life horror stories of families struggling to make the choice between paying for their health care and paying to keep food on their table.

Last month I received a letter from a North Carolina couple nearing retirement who are lifelong small business owners. These are their words:

Last year, our premiums for a bare bones policy was nearly $1,000 a month. It is a terrible policy, but nothing else was available within our budget. I received the 2016 rate late last Friday. The premium is going up 40 percent.

So now that $1,000-a-month policy will cost them $1,400 a month with a higher deductible.

The letter continues:

For the first time in my adult life we may have to forgo having health insurance and take our chances.

I received another letter from another North Carolinian. He wrote:

I'm a self-employed person barely making ends meet. My wife works 60 hours a week. We might take home close to $40,000 a year. We have done our best to make it on our own with no government assistance. Back in 2008, the company I worked for shut down. Since then, we have gone through all our life savings to make ends meet. When I first started buying our health insurance in 2008, our premiums were around $600 for me and my two daughters. Just received our letter and found out our new premium will jump to $1,700 a month.

These stories are heartbreaking, and they are not unique to North Carolina. I know each and every Senator, whether they support ObamaCare or want to repeal it, has received similar stories from constituents chronicling how ObamaCare has caused them immeasurable financial and emotional hardship and no better access to affordable health care.

I can tell you that with nearly every one of these letters and calls to my office I receive, my constituents also express their desire for Congress to vote for repeal of the ObamaCare law. It has caused so much pain, and it hasn't solved any problems. That is exactly what the Senate is going to do tomorrow. We are going to keep our word--something I think sometimes citizens feel we just don't do enough of up here in this Chamber. We are going to send a bill to the President's desk that repeals the most egregious portions of ObamaCare.

Keep in mind that many of the bad things that will occur with ObamaCare are not even in place today. If you don't like it now, I guarantee you will not like it next year even more so.

Again, I want to get back to the process for a minute. This process we are going through is one of the unique instances where we can pass a bill and send it to the President's desk with 51 votes. Normally it takes 60. In order for us to be able to pass it with 51 votes, it is going to require us to be very strict in terms of what this bill may or may not have in it. There are going to be games played tomorrow. There will be amendments put out there that Members know would prevent us from being able to send this bill to the President's desk.

I, for one, am going to stand with the leadership, who I appreciate having the courage to bring this bill forward and make sure that we take votes and send this bill--a fulfillment of my promise to the citizens of North Carolina--to the President's desk. And to those who vote against it, Americans, take notice because they are not listening to you. They are not reading the letters and hearing the stories I hear every single day, and they should be held accountable when they are next up for reelection.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair for his time today, and I yield the floor.

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