Restoring American Finacial Stability Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor as someone who has practiced medicine in Casper, WY, since 1983, as an orthopedic surgeon taking care of many of the families in the great State of Wyoming. I come to you to talk about the health care bill that has been signed into law and to provide a doctor's second opinion about what is now the law of the land.

I come to you as someone who has worked very hard for many years, working with preventive medicine and early detection of problems as a medical director of the Wyoming Health Fairs, a program designed to give people information to stay healthy and keep down the cost of their care.

I come to you with a second opinion on what is now the health care law because I believe the goal of health care reform should be to lower costs, improve quality, and increase access to care.

Unfortunately, the new health care law, in my opinion, is going to be bad for patients, for providers--the nurses and doctors who take care of them--and for the payers, the people paying the bills--the patients as well as the American taxpayers.

I am concerned that the health care bill signed into law is going to increase the cost of care, provide less access to care, and is going to lessen the quality of the available care in this country.

I come to you with new information that has come to light on the health care bill and, specifically, an article that was in Politico this Monday, May 17, written by Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. What she said in this article is:

We are collaborating with States to set up federally funded high-risk insurance pools to make sure that the Americans with the greatest need for health insurance will be able to get it.

Madam President, you know as well as I that there is an old phrase in politics that goes: ``How does it play in Peoria?'' It is referring to Peoria, IL, and means what is the average American thinking about this. Regarding this health care law, it is not playing very well in Peoria. Peoria is a place that President Clinton referred to when he was running, as did George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and President Obama. Those Presidents went to Peoria to talk with people. Yet, when you look at what the Peoria Journal Star has reported about this health care bill, which is now law, in the President's home State, a place that is felt to be the bellwether for political thought in the country, Peoria, IL, the verdict is not good about this health care bill which is now law. I will start with an article that appeared in the Peoria Journal Star that talks about what is happening in Illinois today. It says:

For thousands of Illinois residents who pay high health insurance premiums because of medical problems, the new federal health care legislation won't offer relief.

It will not offer relief, this says. Continuing:

The 16,000 residents who already pay into Ilinois' high-risk health insurance pool will keep paying high rates, while others who enroll this summer under a new, similar program will get coverage at lower, more reasonable prices.

What happened here? This is one of the fundamental flaws. Only the people who have been uninsured for 6 months are eligible--meaning those in the current State pool cannot switch and save money. How do the people of Illinois feel about this? How is it playing in Peoria? Quite poorly.

Julie Kramer is quoted in the article. She is 53. She said she is ``feeling a bit cheated,'' in her words, by this health care law. She has paid high premiums for nearly 7 years in the Illinois high-risk pool; she has played by the rules and has done what she needed to do. Is she being helped by the new health care law? Not at all, and she is feeling cheated.

She went on to say that:

..... it feels very unfair. It goes against the spirit of what health care reform was supposed to be.

Ms. Kramer is a self-employed writer and owner of Full Moon Marketing Communications in Vernon Hills. She said: ``This does seem like a low blow.''

Members of the Senate voted for the bill about which this person says she feels a bit cheated, it seems unfair, and it seems like a low blow. The existing program is called the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Program. Thirty-four other States have similar programs.

People in this Illinois program pay 25 to 50 percent higher--more than standard rates. So they pay their premium; they pay every month. They continue to pay. Yet they are feeling cheated, they feel it is unfair and is a low blow.

Even the Illinois Department of Insurance--their director--understands this lady's frustrations. To even the playing field, the director said the State legislature would have to act to reduce the premiums. You cannot rely on Washington. Illinois expects to receive money from the Federal Government to start the new high-risk pool. The insurance department says there might be enough money to cover about 5,000 people in the new plan. How does that compare? Far fewer--according to the article in the Peoria, IL, paper, far fewer than the number of people who may qualify. A Government Accountability Office report said about 218,000 people might be eligible for a high-risk pool in Illinois.

Well, what does the Illinois high-risk pool Web site say? They sent a letter to enrollees--the people who pay their premiums month after month and play by the rules--and it says it is unlikely Federal funds will be available to reduce premiums paid by the current enrollees--the people who have played by the rules and have continued to pay the bills. They didn't actually send out this letter. They put it on their Web site. They wanted to send it out, but they didn't have the $5,000 for postage to send this letter to the people who have been sending thousands and thousands of dollars into this high-risk pool every year.

The director said: No, we have not mailed the letter because the cost of mailing was prohibitive, given that we have, at this point, not received any actual funding. He said it would be inappropriate to withdraw funds to send such a letter.

Well, Julie Kramer was shown the letter on the Web site, and she said: You know, I did feel a little flash of anger and disappointment when I read it.

I say to the Secretary of Health and Human Services--who wrote a letter to those in Washington via Politico, who said we are doing what we can to make sure we are helping these people--the people of Peoria do not agree and do not believe what she has to say.

That is why, across the board, a majority of the Americans who need health care, who are concerned about the cost of care, look at this health care law and believe, in terms of a law this Congress has passed and this President has signed, that it is going to actually make the cost of their own care go up and the quality of their own care go down. That is why, overwhelmingly, the American people have rejected this health care law.

That is why I come to the floor again with my second opinion, and my opinion is it is time to repeal this law and replace it--replace it with solid ideas that will help people lower the cost of their care, improve the quality of their care, and increase their access to care. That would be patient-centered health care, health care that allows people to buy insurance across State lines, that gives people who buy their own policies the opportunity to get the same tax relief that big companies get, to provide individuals incentives to stay healthy and get the cost of their care down by lowering their risk factors for disease because half the money we spend in health care in this country goes to 5 percent of the people--those who eat too much, exercise too little, and smoke. We need to find solutions that deal with lawsuit abuse, to get down the cost of all the defensive medicine that is practiced in this country and allow small businesses to join together to provide less expensive insurance for the people who work for those businesses.

Those are the things we know will work, the things we know will be able to allow us to deliver higher quality care, that will allow us to lower the cost of care. That is why it is my opinion, as a physician who has practiced medicine since 1983, that we need to repeal this health care law and replace it with something that will work for the people of America.

I yield the floor.

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