Water Resources Development Act of 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor after having seen the minority leader and then the minority whip on the floor this morning talking about the President's health care law. It is a law that the President said people should forcefully defend and be proud. What I heard was a defense of a bill--now a law--that was passed solely along partisan lines a number of years ago. It is very hard to be proud or defend that law based on what the American people are experiencing.
I come to the floor noting that the President is from the home State of Illinois, the minority whip is from the home State of Illinois, and there have been a number of stories in the press recently from that State about just how horrendous the impact of the law has been on the people of the President's home State, to the point that just yesterday there was a story in the Washington Examiner with the headline ``Illinois gets ready for huge Obamacare rate hikes.''
People say: Well, what is not to like about ObamaCare?
According to a Crain's Chicago Business report dated August 27--the headline is ``What's not to like about ObamaCare? Plenty in Illinois.''
There is plenty in Illinois not to like about ObamaCare, but it is not just Illinois and it is not just Nevada, where the minority leader is from; a Gallup poll of the entire country that recently came out showed that more Americans are negative than positive about the health care law. Have there been some people who have been helped? Absolutely. But overall, most Americans in this case have said the impact has been more negative than positive.
It is interesting because the way the question was asked--they asked: Has this health care law helped you personally or has it hurt you and your family?
I was astonished to see that 29 percent of Americans say ObamaCare has hurt them and their families personally. Three out of ten Americans say this law has hurt them and their families personally. Well, how does that happen? Maybe they lost their doctor. The President said: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Many people couldn't, in spite of what the President told them. The President told them their insurance premiums would drop by $2,500. Instead, people are noticing premiums going up around the country. The President said: If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. We know that has not been true.
And then what I found additionally astonishing and should be concerning to all of us as Americans--and as a doctor most concerning to me--is the question, How will this health care law affect your family in the future? More Americans expect the health care law to make their family's health care situation worse in the long term.
These are people talking about their own families, not the minority leader or the minority whip or the President of the United States coming to the floor and talking about this and that--the theoretical aspects. I am talking about American families--men, women, children-- all trying to live a healthy life and finding it has been impeded, hurt by the President's health care law.
It is amazing that 36 percent--more than one in three Americans-- expect this health care law to make their family's health care situation worse. Did we hear about that during the debate on the Senate floor when the bill was written behind closed doors in Harry Reid's office or when Nancy Pelosi said: First you have to pass it before you find out what is in it. Did the American people understand that 6 years later, over one in three would say personally their health care and the health of their own family would be worse because of this law?
The State of Illinois. This is the headline yesterday: ``Illinois gets ready for huge Obamacare rate hikes.'' The first line of the story: ``Half the insurers selling plans in Illinois' Obamacare marketplaces are hiking prices by 50 percent on average, according to the final rates the State published Wednesday.''
These are rates approved by the State of Illinois. Remember, the President said: Oh, we will not let them go up that high. The State of Illinois says that is the only way they can stay in business.
Another headline: ``Illinois Obamacare rates could soar as state submits insurance premium increase to the feds.'' Rates could increase by an average--and we know what the approval rate is--over half will be increasing by over 50 percent. So with that impact, it is interesting that for a 21-year-old nonsmoker--we are talking about somebody who is healthy, who doesn't smoke, and who probably goes to the gym--if they are buying the lowest price silver plan in Cook County, IL--we are talking Chicago, talking about the President's hometown--next year, that 21-year-old healthy individual, nonsmoker, could pay a premium of $221 a month, up from $152 a month. That is a $70 higher premium every month--$840 for the year--for a 21-year-old who is just trying to get health insurance because the law says they have to buy it.
The President says: You just can't get what works for you, you have to buy what I say works for you. You have to listen to the President on this. You can't choose what makes sense for you. The President says: Don't worry. Taxpayers will subsidize it.
If you are not receiving a taxpayer subsidy, you are paying the subsidy for that person, but a lot of people don't get the subsidies. According to the situation in Chicago, about 25 percent of the people who buy insurance on the exchange--the customers there, which is about 84,000 people--do not receive tax credits. They don't receive the subsidy. So they are feeling this in their pocketbooks because the President says they have to buy it because he thinks he knows better, and it sounds like the minority leader and the minority whip have that same opinion.
So the headline comes out, ``What's not to like about Obamacare?'' And then the answer to the question is: ``Plenty in Illinois.'' It talks about Illinois residents who buy health insurance through the ObamaCare exchange should brace themselves for steep premium increases, but it is not just the premiums. They also have to brace themselves for fewer doctors to choose from--less choice in doctors, less choice in hospitals to go to when they enroll, and the enrollment opens on November 1.
The big national health insurance companies have pulled out of Illinois because of substantial losses. There is actually a co-op in Illinois called the Land of Lincoln co-op. It lost $91 million and they closed their doors.
Is it only Illinois, is it only Nevada where they are down to just one choice in most of the State? The President promised a marketplace, but instead it is a monopoly. Companies have pulled out. People have very few choices, if any.
The article says:
While people buying insurance coverage through the Illinois exchange may howl, premiums are jumping even higher in other States. For instance, the insurance commissioner of Tennessee, declaring the state's exchange market ``very near collapse.''
Very near collapse in Tennessee. Yet they approved an increase--the one insurance company--of 62 percent. A 62-percent increase. Is that what the President means when he says ``forcefully defend and be proud''?
The President and Senators on the floor today talked about the issues, and the President pointed to this, and he said: Oh, well, people aren't going to have to go to the emergency room after the ObamaCare health care law has been passed because they will only have to use it for emergencies and not for routine care. Well, what came out in the Chicago Tribune, the President's hometown newspaper, on August 30 of this year? ``Illinois emergency room visits increased after Obamacare.'' They increased. The article says: ``Emergency visits in Illinois increased . . . by more than 14,000 visits a month on average, in 2014 and 2015 compared'' to before the President's health care law was signed. This is from the Annals of Emergency Medicine. They follow these things.
The article in the Chicago Tribune says one of the goals of expanding coverage to all was to reduce the use of pricey services such as emergency department services. That is what the President said. That is what the Democrats said when this bill was being debated. The emergency room was the area of last resort for people who didn't have doctors and who didn't see them regularly, so with the health care law, they wouldn't need to go to the emergency room, but the study's authors noted that this spike of visits in Illinois runs contrary to what the President promised and the President's goal.
The co-ops have been especially troubling and certainly in Illinois the Land of Lincoln co-op, but it is not just Illinois. Co-op after co- op after co-op has failed, including one yesterday in the State of New Jersey--gone. What does Crain's, the Chicago business newspaper, say about Illinois? ``Illinois Obamacare plan to fold after 3-year run.'' ``Land of Lincoln Health, an Obamacare insurer that launched three years ago to bring competition''--the idea of the President, saying he wanted to bring competition--``to the online exchange, is liquidating among big financial losses.''
In location after location, State by State, people who have relied upon the President's promises have been bitterly disappointed. What is so distressing about what happened in Illinois with the co-op is that because it failed during the middle of the year--done--people then need to find new insurance.
We have talked before about the issues of high copays, high deductibles. When a co-op fails and you have to buy new insurance, you have to start over from scratch with paying the copays, paying the deductibles. So somebody who actually bought insurance through the President's idea of this co-op--a co-op that has now failed--finds themselves not only having to find a new insurance company--if they can find one--because the law says they have to buy it, but they also have to start over.
So the Land of Lincoln--the so-called co-op health insurer on the State exchange--is going to shut down the end of September--in a couple weeks. Its 49,000 Illinois members--this is according to the Chicago Tribune--its 49,000 Illinois members have to get new insurance coverage for October, November, and December because it is done at the end of this month. They will likely have to start from zero again on their deductibles and out-of-pocket maximum payments, in some cases costing them thousands of additional dollars.
Is that what President Obama means when he says forcefully defend and be proud? There is very little to be proud about what this President has brought upon the American people, which is why we see so many families concerned.
The final issue I bring up is the fact that so few people are signing up in spite of the fines, in spite of the taxes, and in spite of the mandates, to the point that the Washington Post had a front-page story entitled ``Health-care exchange sign-ups fall far short of forecasts.'' At this point, they expected 24 million people signing up. They are at 11 million. So they are 13 million short. There are still almost 30 million people in this country uninsured, but it is not because they are making it hard to sign up. Oh, no, Mr. President. You may have seen this story that came out yesterday on CNBC news: ``Obamacare marketplaces remain vulnerable to fraud, new government audits find.'' The article says: ``Two new government audits reveal that the nation's Obamacare marketplaces remain `vulnerable to fraud,' after investigators successfully applied for coverage for multiple people who don't actually exist.''
They made up people, they applied, and the ObamaCare exchange sold them the insurance and counted them as good. It says: ``In several cases this year, fake people who hadn't filed tax returns for 2014 were still able to get Obamacare tax credits. . . .'' They were not just able to get insurance but got subsidies from hard-working American taxpayers. They were still able to get ObamaCare tax credits to help pay their monthly premiums for coverage right now.
Continuing to quote from the article: ``This year is the first year in which applicants for those subsidies had to have actually filed their federal tax returns from prior coverage years. . . .'' But they had not filed them. That didn't matter to the ObamaCare exchange people. They are so desperate to get people to sign up because so few people are signing up that they will sign up people who don't exist.
They put up 10 fictitious applications, with 8 of them failing the initial online identity checking process, but all 10 were successfully approved, according to the Government Accountability Office.
It is amazing that people all around the country know how poorly this law is working for them in terms of their lives and their families. I heard one of the Senators today say Republicans have no options. The Republicans have offered plenty of responses to what is happening with the Obama health care law. The State health care CHOICE Act allows States to make a lot of decisions that are now being made by unelected, unaccountable Washington bureaucrats. We have plans working toward patient-centered care to allow people to get the care they need from the doctor they choose at lower costs.
These are things that have been rejected by the Democrats because the President has said ``forcefully defend and be proud.'' Hillary Clinton has said defend and build upon. She wants to do it with additional taxpayer subsidies--subsidies that go to people who do not exist, subsidies that don't deal with the cost of care, subsidies that don't deal with the fact that people are facing high deductibles, high copays, and can't keep their doctors.
In spite of what the President and the Democrats may say, and in spite of what candidate Clinton may say, a huge number of American people have considerable fears their life will be made worse by the President's health care law. Almost 3 in 10 Americans today--29 percent of Americans today--say they and their families have been personally harmed by the President's health care law. That is a sign of failure, Mr. President. It is not a sign of success. It is not something people should forcefully defend and be proud of. It is a sign we need to take a different path--a path that is not the Obama approach, not the one- size-fits-all, and it is not the Washington knows better than the people at home.
We need to get the decisions out of Washington and being made at home so the American people--people who just want to get up, go to work, take care of their family, and get affordable care when they need it-- can get the care they need, from a doctor they choose, at a lower cost.
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