Healthcare

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, you just heard the minority leader. He came to the floor, and he said that the Democrats want a 3-year extension--3 full years--for Biden's COVID bonus payments with absolutely no change to the law; not a single reform to deal with the waste, the fraud, the abuse, and the corruption of these payments from ObamaCare, not a single one. They want to send billions of dollars-- actually, it is likely to be $100 billion--directly from the U.S. Treasury to insurance companies. Insurance companies are highly profitable, and that is their position: just send more U.S. dollars to insurance companies, just do a direct transfer of money.

Should I remind him--does he need to be reminded that the COVID problems are over? But they want to send another $100 billion of Biden COVID bonus payments directly to insurance companies.

Remember, the Democrats shut down the Government of the United States for 43 days because of healthcare, because of ObamaCare. Actually, they wanted, at one point, to give money to illegal immigrants for healthcare. That was part of their demands, free healthcare for illegal immigrants, shut down the government, deny the American people the services they need, transportation, all of those things.

Think of the damage they did to the economy, the damage they did to the country by forcing the American people--43 days of the politics of pain and now the ongoing pain of having to live under ObamaCare with this failed healthcare system that we are living with today.

ObamaCare is a program that undermined healthcare in America. Democrats are saying they want to talk about ObamaCare. Let's talk about what has happened for the last 15 years. I am a doctor. I practiced medicine for 24 years in Wyoming before coming to the U.S. Senate. The Democrats refused to tell the American people--refused to even admit it to themselves, living in denial--that ObamaCare is broken, and it broke healthcare in America. ObamaCare is a failure. ObamaCare is unaffordable.

Let me point out, not a single Republican voted for ObamaCare, not one. Premiums for people on ObamaCare have gone up over 220 percent since ObamaCare became law 15 years ago. For people that have ObamaCare, their deductibles have doubled. A family of four now pays $10,000 more for the coverage today than it did before ObamaCare.

Competition for selling insurance in the United States has collapsed. In rural counties in my home State of Wyoming, your home State, Mr. President, of Oklahoma, people lost so many of the options they had to buy insurance. The insurance providers have dried up. Today, many counties are left with one provider only for people to buy from. Some counties have none. Rural hospitals are struggling.

More than 100 rural hospitals have closed since ObamaCare became law. Hundreds more are at risk because of the devastating effect of ObamaCare on healthcare in our Nation.

Let's go back and recall what President Obama told the Nation as he was promoting ObamaCare and every one of the Democrats voted for it, every single one of them. He said: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. He said: If you like your policy, you can keep your policy. These are the things that the President of the United States told the American people when Obama was in the White House. He went on to say probably the biggest lie of all. He said your insurance premiums would go down by $2,500 a year for families.

Every single one of these was a lie. The American people see it. The American people--even the New York Times said that ``ObamaCare is pricey.'' They said that about a month ago. The Washington Post admitted that ObamaCare was never affordable. These aren't my words; these are the words of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

How do Democrats continue to cover up the failure, to continue to mislead the American people? They tried to do it with government subsidies. They tried to cover up the failures of ObamaCare with government-paid subsidies--not to the American people but directly to the American insurance companies.

When they found out those subsidies weren't enough, what did they do when those juicy subsidies weren't carrying the day? They said: Let's add new subsidies on top of it, which is what they are talking about extending. Those new juicier subsidies today, they want to extend those for 3 more years.

They put them in place during COVID. They called them the Biden COVID bonus subsidies. Now they want to make them permanent. They want to extend them 3 years. Now they want to make them permanent, have the American people--have the Treasury of the United States send more money to insurance companies as the cost of healthcare continues to climb.

When Biden was President, Democrats created these Biden COVID bonuses, new subsidies, added on top to prop up ObamaCare because it was falling. ObamaCare was toppling. Democrats said: We can't have this. Let's send hundreds of billions of more dollars to insurance companies.

Let's be very clear: The money does not go to the American people. It is a main line straight from the U.S. Government Treasury into the bank accounts of big insurance companies. The American people, the consumers, are cut out of the equation. American consumers have no way to say how the money is spent, and they need to have a voice in this. They have the government writing big checks.

There is no incentive to control costs. Zero incentive to compete. As a result, insurance companies continue to raise premiums as high as they want, and their profits continue to go up.

These increases aren't because the Biden COVID bonuses are expiring, although that is what the Democrats are trying to say. Remember, Democrats chose the date of the expiring of these subsidies when they put this into law in 2022. That is what they did. They had the House, Senate, White House and said: We are going to put more money in--even they realized COVID was going to be done by the end of this year--so they set this up as an expiring date. Now they realize: Oh, no, ObamaCare continues to topple over. We need to prop it up with more government money to insurance companies.

The end of these Biden COVID bonuses explain about 4 percent of next year's projected 20-percent spike in insurance premiums. These huge premium increases explain why the stock prices of insurance companies have soared for 500 to 1,000 percent since ObamaCare became law. That is what we are seeing. That is the reality of this. Big insurance companies, not the American people, are whom the Democrats continue to support financially.

Democrats created a system with zero accountability. Now they want to extend this broken system with these additional subsidies for another 3 years with zero reforms, nothing. They are not going after the waste, not going after the fraud, not going after the abuse. Oh, no, Democrats are happy paying massive subsidies, and for everybody, for people making over a quarter of a million dollars a year, people making over half a million dollars a year. Nope, keep sending the money over to the insurance companies for all their rich, fat-cat friends.

The Biden COVID bonuses are not improving patient care, I will tell you that as a doctor. For every taxpayer dollar spent on these subsidies, Americans believe they get about 34 cents of value. Where does the rest of the money go? Waste, fraud, abuse, and, yes, corruption.

How do we know there is corruption? Last year, the American people filed over 200,000 complaints with the Federal Government about that specific thing. They complained because they were unknowingly signed up or switched into ObamaCare plans, things they didn't choose, they didn't want, they didn't ask for. Those are 200,000 that complained. How many more were there that didn't know about it or didn't know enough or whom to complain to? Insurers signed up individuals for insurance plans they didn't even know they had. Biden COVID bonuses are an expensive, fraud-ridden failure, and the Democrats want to extend them for another 3 years.

Continuing to pour billions of dollars more into the pockets of big insurance companies without meaningful protection against fraud will not lower costs in healthcare. It will not help the American people. Republicans believe Americans deserve high-quality affordable care. It is not what people got under ObamaCare, not at all.

Republicans believe taxpayer dollars should go directly to hard- working people, not to the big insurance companies. Give buying power to the people. Let people make decisions. I trust the American people. You want to empower Americans to make their own decisions about healthcare, certainly, and about their own families and what the needs are for their family, what is right for them.

There is a clear divide between the Democrats and Republicans on healthcare. And on one side of the aisle, you have Democrats protecting a broken system with not a single plan to lower costs. On this side of the aisle, we have Republicans fighting to give people what they wanted all along, the care they need from a doctor they choose, at a price they can afford.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source