Obamacare

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak, as Senator Thune has just spoken, about the disastrous health care results for patients of ObamaCare. You have to go no further than this Sunday's New York Times, the Sunday Review front page. It looks like a red cross tilted on its side with the headline ``Sorry, We Don't Take ObamaCare.''

The minority leader, Harry Reid, comes to the floor and talks about how wonderful it is. The President says: ``Forcefully defend and be proud.'' Of what? Of ``Sorry, we don't take ObamaCare''?

This is the New York Times, a newspaper whose editorial board has supported this health care law. They talk about the pains of the health care act frustrating patients.

It says:

Amy Moses and her circle of self-employed small-business owners were supporters of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act. They bought policies on the newly created New York State exchange.

We have two Democratic Senators from New York. Where are they to respond to what has happened to the people of their home State as a result of this law?

They bought insurance policies on the New York State exchange. What happened? Well, when they called doctors and hospitals in Manhattan to schedule an appointment, they were dismayed to be turned away--not once, it says, but again and again. It says ``We don't take ObamaCare'' is the umbrella term for the hundreds of plans offered through the President's signature health legislation.

This is the New York Times, about New York. It is a big city, a place where there should be plenty of doctors, plenty of opportunity.

Ms. Moses said:

Anyone who is on these plans knows it's a two-tiered system.

Is that what the President promised the American people--a two-tiered system? She is a successful entrepreneur in a two-tiered system. We are talking about a number of women in New York who are entrepreneurs and are very successful.

Anytime one of us needs a doctor, we send out an alert.

Is that what we are supposed to have? Anytime anybody needs a doctor, send out an alert? If you have a sore throat, send out an alert. That is what they need to do.

The alert they send out among this whole group in New York says: ``Does anyone have anyone on an exchange plan that does mammography or colonoscopy [who takes our insurance]?''

She said, ``It's really a problem.''

I could go on. This is what the President of the United States and the Democrats in this body, who shoved this bill down the throats of the American people, have found that they have created--a plan one in four Americans says has hurt them personally.

That is just one story in the news in one major newspaper, but it says a lot about the health care law in general.

We just heard from Senator Thune. We know this health care law is a lot more expensive than the President ever promised. People all around the country remember the President saying that it will drive down health care premiums by $2,500 per family if it becomes law. Remember that? People all across the country remember it. It just hasn't happened. Costs have gone up, copays have gone up, and deductibles have gone up. People have lost their plans, lost their ability to see their doctor, can't go to the hospital they want, and can't get the care they need.

Insurance companies are cutting back on which doctors people can see, and they are cutting back on what drugs people can take. This health care law has made health care worse across the United States of America. We know that some insurance companies are dropping States entirely in terms of a place to do business, so millions of Americans are going to lose their insurance plan again next year.

Do you remember what the President said? ``If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.'' Well, not next year, not last year, not the year before that. Even the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies these issues, says that there are more than 650 counties in which families will have only one choice for insurance next year.

I pulled up an article from the New York Times. That is not the only place there has been a similar article. This is Monday's paper, May 16, Wall Street Journal: ``Health insurers quit rural exchanges.'' They are abandoning rural areas all across the country--in my home State of Wyoming, but it is also happening everywhere. It is entire States-- Alaska, Alabama, Wyoming. There is only one choice where people can buy ObamaCare insurance next year.

If you only have one choice, often you are put in a situation where you can take it or leave it. Not under Barack Obama. Oh, no. You must buy it. You have no choice, other than to pay an expensive penalty. That is what health care looks like now under Harry Reid and the Democrats and Barack Obama and the Senators on the Democratic side of the aisle who voted for this monstrosity. Take it or leave it. But you can't leave it because you must buy it.

What happens when there is no competition? What happens when the health care law adds thousands of pages of expensive mandates and costs continue to go up? Premiums have gone through the roof. These are the requested premium hikes for ObamaCare plans for next year: We have seen 33 percent requested in Virginia; Oregon, 32 percent; Iowa, 43 percent; New Hampshire, 45 percent for some families. People are finding out that their insurance premiums are now higher than their mortgage payment.

What do the Democrats say about all of this? Someone brought this up to Hillary Clinton at a campaign event in Virginia last week. A woman who owns a small business said: ``I have seen our health insurance for my own family go up $500 a month in just the last two years. We went from 400-something to 900-something [a month].''

What did Hillary Clinton have to say about this? What was her response? She said: ``What could possibly have raised your costs . . . that's what I don't understand.''

Is she serious? It is ObamaCare that raised her costs. Where has Hillary Clinton been the last 6 years that she doesn't understand it? This was in Virginia. This small business owner--the woman who went to the townhall meeting and asked Hillary Clinton a question--may see her rates go up another 33 percent next year.

It is not just Hillary Clinton who is clueless. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, came to the floor last month and told the world that ObamaCare is ``working.'' Does Harry Reid not understand that millions of American are paying more for their health insurance and their health care than they did before ObamaCare? Many people are paying for insurance, but they can't get care, as we see from the New York Times story. Does Senator Reid not understand that people are paying more for coverage and getting less care in return?

Does every Senator on the Democratic side of the aisle who voted for ObamaCare not understand how this outrageous law is hurting America and Americans and the people of this great country?

There was a new poll that came out last month that found that only 44 percent of Americans approve of the health care law but 54 percent disapprove of the law. I remember Senator Schumer of New York saying: After we pass it, it will get more popular. Still, 54 percent disapprove. That is the highest disapproval number in the last 2 years. In this poll, almost one in three Americans said that the health care law has had a negative effect on their family--their personal family; not that they know somebody but in their own family. Hillary Clinton doesn't seem to understand that. She said that she wants to expand ObamaCare. She wants more regulations, more restrictions, more of the terrible ideas that have driven up costs for American families.

There was another piece of news last week that shows one more way the health care law is failing. It turns out that the Obama administration has been making illegal payments--payments found by a judge to be illegal--to big insurance companies to help prop up this health care law. That is what the Federal court ruled last Thursday.

In 2014 the administration asked Congress to appropriate money to pay insurance companies above and beyond the subsidies they already get that the government pays for insurance premiums. It is called a cost- sharing subsidy. Congress--power of the purse--refused to appropriate the money.

Do you know what the administration did? The administration panicked. It knew that without more Washington spending, people would pay even more out of pocket for their health care costs, and that would make ObamaCare even more unpopular than it is today. In the panic, because they knew that if that happened, people would realize how expensive the law really is and the disaster it is turning into, and people would see that all the President's promises about reducing costs were nothing but fairy tales, the panicked Obama administration went ahead and handed over the money anyway without the authority of Congress. The total was about $7 billion over the last 2 years. That is how much additional taxpayer money the administration has given away so far to hide the fact that the health care law is an expensive failure.

The American people have had enough of this costly and collapsing health care law. They have had enough of losing their insurance, losing their doctors, losing access to the prescription drugs they need, and paying 20 or 30 percent more every year to get less coverage.

The Democrats can come to the floor and pretend that ObamaCare is working. The Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, don't understand what is going on. The American people know exactly what is going on. They want us to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with health care that actually works, that has fewer restrictions, more freedom--freedom for people to get the coverage that works for them and their families, not what President Obama says they have to have because he believes he knows what they need better than they do.

We need fewer mandates that drive up the cost for everyone and more options for patients to see the doctors they want and to get the medicine they need. That is what the American people want, and it is time for Democrats to show that they are listening to the people of America and that they understand, because up to this point, they have not been listening and they do not understand.

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