Water Resources Development Act of 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Well, it is so interesting that the Senator would bring this up because the entire State of Wyoming has found itself in exactly the same situation where there is only one choice. Remember, the President promised a marketplace. What the American people have gotten is a monopoly. In one-third of all the counties in the country, they are down to a single--and it is not really a choice; it is a take-it- or-leave-it situation. I call all of these places falling into what is called the ``ObamaCare wasteland.'' It is unfortunate to see it happening in county after county.
I know you have been talking about the headlines: 31 percent, one in three counties, one choice. That is not what the President promised. One broken promise after another.
I don't know if you saw the most recent polling today out from Gallup. It said a couple of things: The number of people who disapprove of the health care has gone up and the number who approve has dropped. The headlines are telling the true story about how bad this is. People are finally seeing the truth, in spite of all the things the Obama administration and the Democrats who passed these things have been saying for a number of years.
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Mr. BARRASSO. Well, that is it. The deductibles and the copays are one of the reasons that people are saying they are disapproving of the health care law. The premiums have continued to go up, but on top of that, even if you get a subsidy that President Obama says is helpful, it doesn't touch it that first time or the second or the 5,000th because people, before they actually get to use the so-called insurance, have to come up with, for families, sometimes up to $10,000 out of their own pocket before that. So the insurance is not really useful.
It is interesting when we listen to the President say they have coverage--but not if they can't get care. It is useless coverage. It is empty coverage. It is not what people want, which is affordable care.
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Mr. BARRASSO. That is very often the case, and we are seeing more and more of that across the country. Emergency room doctors are saying they are swamped.
The President says that when they get ObamaCare, they will find family doctors. That is not what is happening. What is happening is the emergency rooms are being more and more included and involved, and that is where patients are turning today, which is why the Gallup poll today says 29 percent of Americans say they have personally been hurt by the health care law, and this may also be true in Arizona, or worse. So to help people who didn't have insurance, the President and the Democrats and those who voted for this bill should never have had to hurt so many Americans, and today about one in three Americans says they have been personally hurt by this law. Those are the numbers that are out today.
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Mr. BARRASSO. Senator Graham from South Carolina and I introduced a bill called the Health Care Choice Act to let the States have much more of a say in this. The State Health Care Choice Act provides freedom, flexibility, choice. So much of the reason prices have gone up so high is, the President has decided what kind of insurance people need to buy instead of letting the people themselves decide what they need, what is best for them and their families. I have gotten letters, and I know you have as well, where families had insurance that worked for them, but it wasn't good enough for President Obama because he feels he knows better than the people know about themselves and their families.
We want to provide the freedom and the flexibility of choice to let States decide whether they want to comply with the mandates of ObamaCare. States have much more involvement than Washington's one- size-fits-all that I know sure doesn't work for Wyoming and I suspect doesn't work in Arizona either.
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Mr. BARRASSO. ObamaCare has actually made that worse because if you take a look at the numbers in the deductibles and copays, people who get insurance through ObamaCare have found out in the last several years that they have paid twice as much out of pocket for prescription drugs as people who got insurance through work because at work the copays are lower, the deductibles are lower, and there is coverage for medications which are expensive because of medical breakthroughs.
The life expectancy of human beings continues to go up because of the advances in medicine and technology. All of these advances have been very helpful for us as citizens of this country and as people living on this planet, but the costs are there, and with ObamaCare we are finding that those people who have to get prescriptions filled through ObamaCare are paying over twice as much as what people are paying who get insurance through work, which is why we need to get away from ObamaCare and repeal it and replace it with patient-centered care, which we are not getting under the ObamaCare law.
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Mr. BARRASSO. That was the front page story in the Washington Post on Sunday, August 28, ``Health Exchange Sign-Ups Fall Short.''
The Congressional Budget Office expected 24 million people to sign up, and less than 11 million have signed up. So less than half of the people they predicted would sign up have done so, and the reason is, so many people looked at it and didn't sign up. Why don't people sign up? Because they believe it is a bad deal for them personally. They looked at the high copays, the high deductibles, as the Senator from Arizona made reference to, and the high premiums. They decided it was cheaper to pay a fine than to buy the insurance. They find they cannot use it anyway because the deductibles and copays are so high.
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Mr. BARRASSO. Interestingly enough, President Obama has made it pretty easy to do that. What we found in watching some of these testimonies from around the country, in one State, you had over 250 people who signed up, got treatment, over $100,000 worth of treatment, and then dropped the insurance. They are gaming the system left and right because that is the way President Obama has it set up.
Look, it was written behind closed doors in the office of the then- majority leader, Harry Reid, but because it has become such a disaster, the Democrats have lost the majority and are now in the minority because so many people are bothered by the way the President and the believers in his process have said: It is all right. We have the votes. We are going to do it. We are not going to listen to Republicans. We are not going to listen to doctors who have practiced medicine their whole lives. We know what is better for the American people. That is exactly what we have happening. That is why so many people are saying: It is not a good deal for me. I don't want any part of it. Now we see this Gallup poll where 49 percent of Americans believe this health care law has hurt them personally. Today we are seeing that a greater number of Americans believe this law is going to hurt health care for them and their families into the future. So that is not a good projection about what we need as Americans in a time when we have more people who are living longer and older and want to lead healthier lives.
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