Restoring American Finacial Stability Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I first thank the chairman for the acknowledgement and thank him for the opportunity to take the floor.

I come here because of new information that has come to light about the health care bill that has been signed into law. As a physician who has practiced medicine in Wyoming for 25 years, as an orthopedic surgeon, I come to offer a second opinion on this bill and now this law. I went into this focused on the sorts of things the President had talked about--lowering the cost of care, improving the quality of care, increasing the access to care. But I come to the Senate floor today with my second opinion because I think these things have not been accomplished by the bill that has been signed into law.

For many years, I have been the medical director of the Wyoming health fairs--giving low-cost blood screening to people around the Cowboy State, giving them opportunities to learn about themselves, their health, and to focus on getting down the cost of care.

Today, when I come with my second opinion, it is that this bill--this bill now signed into law--is going to be bad for patients, bad for providers--the nurses and doctors who take care of these patients--and bad for payers, the people who are going to be paying the bill for this new law, the taxpayers of the country. I believe fundamentally that in passing this law, this is going to result in higher costs for patients, not lower costs. It will result in less access for patients, not more access.

This is going to result in unsustainable spending at a time when we are looking at record unemployment and record debt.

I come today to talk about what I have seen in the new information that has been coming forth since the bill was signed into law. I have an editorial written in the Columbus Dispatch:

Almost daily the ill effects of the health care overhaul passed by Congress are becoming apparent.

The editorial in the Columbus Dispatch goes on:

As employees and government bureaucrats analyze the law's effects on the bottom line for the private sector and for government, the alarm bells are ringing. The tragedy is that these ill effects could have been and should have been calculated before the law was passed, not after.

It goes on:

In fact, many of them were prophesied before passage of the bill, but the prophets were ignored by President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress. That is because their uppermost goal was not to pass the best health care bill possible but merely to pass anything that could be called health care reform and could be claimed as a political victory by a President desperate for one.

I come today with my second opinion on the high-risk pool which has been in the headlines the last couple of days. When the President and Democratic Members of Congress were pushing the health care bill, they promised that people with preexisting conditions would receive immediate relief. The bill has been signed into law, and Americans with preexisting conditions remain as confused as ever as to how this new law will impact them, will impact their lives and will impact their pocketbooks.

Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands--that is right, hundreds of thousands--of Americans with preexisting conditions are going to end up getting the short end of the stick. In fact, even USA Today recently reported that the new law is going to trap 200,000 Americans in pricey, State-operated, high-risk plans. Here is the front page of USA Today from last Thursday: ``Health law traps some in pricey state plans; 200,000 hard to insure can't get federal option.'' Mr. President, 200,000 Americans trapped. These are the folks who have been paying for coverage through the State high-risk insurance programs that exist today.

One might say: How can that be? What is the catch? These 200,000 people are not eligible for the brandnew, low-cost, high-risk program that is created by the law. Are these not the people we were trying to help? The law requires that for people to get into this new plan, they have to have been without insurance for the last 6 months. We have 200,000 Americans with preexisting conditions who have been playing by the rules, who have been doing what is right. What happens? They are not going to have any access to the benefit the President and the Democrats in this Congress promised would be available to them.

Don't just take my word for it. Here is what the Kansas insurance commissioner had to say. She said that we have people who have struggled to stay in our existing pool and take care of their existing health needs. And then this new pool comes along, and it is more generous and they are not going to be eligible for it.

What is the difference? With the new pool, the maximum amount someone is going to have to pay for an individual is $5,950; for a family, $11,900. That is 100 percent of the standard market rate. But many of these high-risk pools across the country are at a point where they are charging twice the standard market rate because these people are an increased risk because of their preexisting conditions.

The people who have been playing by the rules, doing it right, and, as the insurance commissioner said, people who have struggled to stay in the existing pool, they are going to be left out, ignored, and rejected by this new law the President has signed into law.

This week, all 50 States were given the opportunity to tell the administration whether they wanted to run their brandnew, high-risk pool for individuals with preexisting conditions. The answer has not been positive.

Just yesterday, Tuesday, May 4, the Washington Post said: ``18 states decline to run `high-risk' insurance pools.'' Eighteen States said to Washington: No, thank you. Eighteen States have refused to participate. Why? Mainly, they do not know, if and when the Federal money runs out, how it is going to be paid for.

One may say: What do you mean, the Fed money runs out? They just passed this health care bill that is going to cost almost $1 trillion. For this high-risk pool, the amount of money that was put in, $5 billion--in the Chief Actuary report of Medicare and Medicaid, they said the money is likely to run out before 2012, even though it is supposed to last until 2014.

What is going to happen to these States? No one knows, and the administration is not saying.

The Governor of Wyoming, Dave Freudenthal, looked at this as a Governor and asked: What do I want to do? Do I want to participate or not? He is one of the Governors who looked at it very carefully, and he is one of the Governors representing the 18 States that said, ``No, thank you,'' to Washington.

This is what he said in his letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. He said:

The State of Wyoming has operated a very successful high risk health insurance pool for nearly 20 years, which has served Wyoming citizens well.

And we have. I was involved with this when I was in the State senate, where I served for 5 years. As he said, a very successful, high-risk health insurance pool for nearly 20 years, which has served the citizens of Wyoming very well. Then he goes on to say:

..... necessary requirements have not been set out and key terms have not been defined. Without such guidance, I find it unwise to further consume my staff and Department of Insurance with the guesswork currently necessary to implement this program.

Mr. President, these Governors are just guessing--guessing if it will work, guessing if it would not work--and nobody knows. That is why, in an interview with the Associated Press yesterday, the Governor of Wyoming said:

..... the $8 million the federal government offered the state to run the high-risk insurance program until 2014 wouldn't be enough.

He also said he's concerned the state wouldn't have been allowed to administer the federal pool together with its existing state program.

Sorry, States--this is what the Secretary is saying--we in Washington know better than you. You might have a program that has worked for 20 years very successfully in your home State of Wyoming, but we don't want to know about it. We want you to either set up a new program and do it our way or forget about it. And that is what the people of Wyoming have decided because the Governor said: When I looked at it, it just didn't seem to make financial sense.

So, once again, the administration is saying: Trust us. They want to act now and ask questions later. Well, Americans and Governors across our country have serious questions about this new high-risk insurance program--how much it will cost the States, how much it will cost the taxpayers, and why all American patients with preexisting conditions would not have access to the immediate benefits they were promised.

Unfortunately, Washington's lack of answers clearly demonstrates that this administration doesn't have its act together. The administration has not delivered on the President's promise to help all Americans who have preexisting conditions have access to the same affordable health insurance coverage. That is why all across this country people are saying: This bill, rammed through the Congress, with all the sweetheart deals, and signed into law, wasn't passed for somebody like me. It was passed for somebody else.

So I come to the floor of the Senate today to say it is time to repeal this legislation and replace it with legislation that delivers personal responsibility and opportunities for individual patients, that will get down the cost of care, that will improve the quality, and will improve the access to care. We need patient-centered health care--something that will provide individual incentives, such as premium breaks for people by encouraging healthy behavior; that allows people to take their health insurance with them when they move from State to State or when they change jobs; that gives the uninsured and the self-insured the same relief when they buy insurance that the big companies get; that allows people to buy insurance across State lines; that deals with lawsuit abuse; that allows small businesses to join together to get down the cost of their care. These are the things that will work to get down the cost of care, to deliver high-quality care, and improve access to care. Those things are not in the health care bill that was signed into law. They are not in the health care bill that passed this body and passed the House.

So that is why I come to the Senate floor to once again offer my second opinion that it is time to repeal this bill and replace it--replace it with something that will work well for the American people.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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