Executive Calendar - Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the disasters of ObamaCare and a possible solution. It is a powerful first step--not perfect but a step that would take us off the path toward a single- payer system and put us on a path toward federalism, with greater State control but, in many respects, greater freedom for the American public.
During the last healthcare discussion and debate, I spoke with a couple, Sherry and Vern Colby from River Falls, WI. They had a real problem: They had preexisting conditions. They were quite pleased when ObamaCare passed because their preexisting conditions, they believed, would be covered. So they signed up for ObamaCare in 2014, paid the premiums, sent in their paycheck stubs to make sure their income levels qualified for the subsidies. Then a funny thing happened when they got their tax returns in March of 2015: They had to pay back more than $15,000 in subsidies because they made $59,000. They had to cash in pretty much all of their 401(k). They had to sell their house so they wouldn't lose it in foreclosure.
I spoke with Sherry Colby today because, as we have debated the possibility of passage of Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson, we have heard a lot of demagoguery. We have heard a lot of false charges. I would like to refute a couple of those.
One of the claims of ObamaCare is it guaranteed that if you have a preexisting condition, you are free from worry, you will be covered. Well, in Sherry and Vern Colby's case, that is simply not true.
I spoke with Sherry just this afternoon. Again, they had to sell their house, and they had to cash in their 401(k). Their nightmare didn't end at that point in time because President Obama, as he left office, took short-term, limited-duration plans--that duration from 264 days down to 90 days. Now Sherry and Vern Colby are forced to buy these short-term, limited-duration plans that only last for 90 days. When I say ``forced,'' the problem they have is that they work. Vern drives milk trucks 60 hours a week. Sherry works in a florist's shop 30 hours a week. They make too much to be subsidized under ObamaCare. They don't make enough to be able to afford the premium of $14,000 per year with a $12,500 deductible. So right now they are paying $5,500 a year, and they have a $5,000 deductible per quarter and a 70/30 copay for a short-term, limited-duration plan that can and did exclude their preexisting conditions.
Shortly after they signed up with IHC, Vern had a condition that required a hospital stay. The problem is, his preexisting condition wasn't covered under their insurance. The bill for that hospital stay was $45,000. To add insult to injury, because their short-term, limited-duration plan is not ObamaCare compliant, they are also paying the penalty. They are purchasing insurance, paying $5,500 per year, $20,000 in deductibles, a $45,000 hospital bill, and they are still penalized by the American Government under ObamaCare.
Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson maintains the provision of the guaranteed issue, covering people with preexisting conditions. There are all kinds of charges that somehow ObamaCare has guaranteed coverage for those individuals and Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson would not.
Personally, I believe Governors, State legislators, and the people in the State of Wisconsin will be far more concerned about Sherry and Vern Colby and will have innovative solutions, such as Wisconsin's high-risk pool or Maine's invisible high-risk pool, to actually bring down premiums so the Colbys can actually afford insurance without having to quit their jobs.
But that is not the main reason I came to the floor today. While sitting in that chair or watching TV over the weekend, listening to people's speeches, I have heard repeatedly from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle talking about Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson that it is going to destroy Medicaid as we know it, that it will be slashing spending in Medicaid--massive, deep cuts.
Let me go to a couple of charts.
This first chart really has nothing to do with healthcare--except it has everything to do with healthcare. What this chart shows is the CBO projection of deficits over the next 30 years by decade. CBO made the projections as a percentage of the GDP. Nobody understands percentages--we don't buy hamburgers with percentages--so we converted those percentages of GDP into dollars. According to our best calculations, CBO projects almost a $10 trillion deficit over the next 10 years; the second decade, $37 trillion; the third decade, $82 trillion, for a whopping total of a $129 trillion deficit over the next 30 years. That would be added to our $20 trillion worth of debt.
There are a number of ways of describing this deficit. I am putting up two right now. What is it composed of? Well, if you take a look at revenue versus outlays, the deficit is composed of about an $18 trillion deficit in Social Security alone. In other words, Social Security over the next 30 years will pay out $18 trillion more in benefits than it brings to the payroll tax; Medicare, $39 trillion. Interest on the debt over that same 30 years will be $65 trillion for a whopping total of $122 trillion of deficits over the next 30 years. That explains 95 percent of the deficit.
Another way of looking at that deficit is this: Over the next 30 years, our revenue will equal almost $200 trillion--$199 trillion. Outlays for Social Security will be $69 trillion; Medicare, $55 trillion; Medicaid and ObamaCare $32 trillion, for a subtotal of $156 trillion. If you add $65 trillion interest on the debt, we are already exceeding our revenue.
You will notice that there is no money at all for any agencies, for national defense, for any other welfare programs. All the money is consumed by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare, and interest on the debt. This is clearly unsustainable.
Let's talk about cuts. What would a cut really look like? Well, this is the truth in terms of what we are projected to spend on Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare, and what we would spend under Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson. If you go back to the year 2009, we were spending slightly more than $200 billion for Medicaid alone. This last year, we were spending about $438 billion. We have basically doubled spending in just the last 9 years. According to projections, by the end of this time period, we will be spending over $700 billion per year on ObamaCare and Medicaid combined. Graham-Cassidy would spend a little less than that--not much less.
Let me take a look at what a real cut would be. There are no cuts; you will notice spending never declines year over year--not once. It continues to grow year over year, not that far from the projections.
This is what a real cut looks like. Many of my colleagues have talked about and campaigned on something they call the penny plan--a way to rein in out-of-control Federal spending by doing something that seems pretty reasonable, which is to take any government program and just reduce a dollar's worth of spending by just a penny. It would be a 1- percent cut per year. If we were to do that to ObamaCare and Medicaid, you would see what a real cut looks like--a pretty minor cut, the type of cut many people have suggested under the penny plan, but that is what a real cut looks like. What Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson does is not a cut; it is just a slight reduction in the rate of growth and spending.
Again, oftentimes colleagues on the other side of the aisle are talking about drastic cuts. Well, let me detail what I would consider to be a possibly drastic cut. Let's say, rather than just 1 percent a year, we reduce spending by 5 percent a year or 10 percent a year. You know, I would agree with folks on the other side; if we were proposing those types of cuts, I would say that is slashing spending. I would say that would be a massive or draconian cut. But, again, that is not what we are doing. We are just slightly reducing spending over the next 10 years.
Let's look at this a little bit differently. Let's take a look at cumulative spending. If you just take cumulative spending year over year and add it up--our current projection on ObamaCare and Medicaid-- we would spend $5,688 billion; that is, $5.67 trillion. The Graham- Cassidy-Heller-Johnson proposed spending is the green line, $5.44 trillion or a reduction of $226 billion over 10 years, a 3.99 percent decrease--not draconian, not massive, not slashing. It is a small, slight reduction in the growth of spending.
Let's take a look at what would happen if we just adhered to the penny plan in terms of cumulative spending. Again, this would be a real cut--1 percent per year. We would take the current law at $5.67 trillion. The penny plan would actually reduce that to $4.2 trillion, and you would save $1.5 trillion for about 26 percent in savings. That would be a real cut that would constrain the growth of entitlements so we can further reduce the mortgage of our children by just a little bit.
Why is this important? Again, to put things in perspective, over the next 10 years--this is blown up from our first chart--the projected deficit, according to CBO is close to $10 trillion--$9.6 trillion. What we are proposing under Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson is a $226 billion reduction in the rate of growth of spending on Medicare or on Medicaid and ObamaCare--a 2.4-percent reduction in relationship to the $9.6 trillion projected deficit. Is that massive? Is that draconian? I don't believe so.
The types of controls we need to start enacting, if we are ever going to stop mortgaging our children's future, would be more like the penny plan, but even there, you can see how inadequate that is, based on the problem. The penny plan would reduce spending by $1.48 trillion--about a 15.4-percent reduction to our $9.6 trillion deficit.
Let me conclude by talking about the fact that here in Washington, DC, here in Congress, we are not very good at solving problems, partly because not very many Members or their staffs have ever served in the private sector. They don't really understand people like Vern or Sherry Colby, who, as President Bill Clinton said, ``are out there busting it,'' working 60 to 70 hours a week. Their premiums have doubled and, in many cases, tripled. Their coverage is cut in half. They can't afford ObamaCare. They don't understand how businesses are struggling to pay the premiums when they provide healthcare. They don't understand it, and what they certainly don't understand is the problem-solving process: admitting you have a problem, defining that problem, gathering the information, doing the root cause analysis, and then, based on that careful analysis, based on the information, setting achievable goals and designing legislation, then designing the solution.
We haven't been honest with ourselves in this body. We haven't come to grips with why premiums have doubled and, in many cases, tripled. It was because of the faulty design of ObamaCare--the fact that we are asking 5 to 6 percent of the American population to shoulder the full burden of covering people with preexisting, high-cost conditions. There is a way of addressing this, but we have to be honest. We have to set aside the rhetoric. We have to set aside the demagoguery.
We have to take that first step of loosening the ties of this one- size-fits-all model here in Washington, DC, letting the States innovate--like Wisconsin, like Maine's invisible high-risk pool--to actually bring down premiums. In Maine, when they enacted invisible high-risk pools, premiums for young people were cut to one-third of what they had been under guaranteed issue. For older folks, they were cut in half. It is possible to do this if we are honest and if we are courageous.
With that, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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