American Jobs And Closing Tax Loopholes Act Of 2010

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today because the President of the United States earlier today had a townhall meeting to talk about the new health care law, the law he has promoted and talked about and which has been a major point of discussion, debate, and then vote in this Chamber over the last year.

I come as someone who has practiced medicine in Casper, WY, since 1983, as an orthopedic surgeon, taking care of families all around the State of Wyoming, and working on prevention, working on early detection of medical problems through what is called Wyoming Health Fairs.

I come to the floor today, having watched and read the comments by the President, to take a look at some of those comments and see what the American people heard from the President and what I see as my doctor's second opinion about this health care law. It is a law that I believe is bad for patients, bad for payers--the American taxpayers--and bad for our medical providers--our nurses and our doctors--who take care of those patients. Like most Americans, I believe this is going to, unfortunately, raise the cost of care for American families and lower the availability and quality of that care.

I wish to point out a few of the comments the President of the United States said today, and I want to do that from my perspective as someone who goes home to Wyoming on weekends and visits with patients. Just a few minutes ago, earlier today, I visited with a patient, someone I had operated on, done surgery on her knee about 10 years ago.

One of the things the President talked about today was Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage, in my opinion, is a program that has a lot of advantages. That is why one out of four Americans on Medicare signs up for Medicare Advantage. It deals with preventive care. It deals with coordinating care, so care is coordinated in a way that patients get better care.

The President said Medicare Advantage benefits will not change. He said:

First and foremost, what you need to know is that the guaranteed Medicare benefits that you've earned will not change, regardless of whether you receive them through Medicare or Medicare Advantage.

Seniors who know a lot about Medicare Advantage know that is not the case. You do not have to go very far back to find it. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal talked about Medicare, and specifically Medicare Advantage. I will quote from this article. It says:

Dozens of Medicare Advantage providers--

These are the insurance companies that help with Medicare Advantage--

plan to cut back vision, dental and prescription benefits.

``Plan to cut back vision, dental and prescription benefits.''

Some plans are eliminating free teeth cleanings and gym memberships, and raising fees for hearing aides, eye glasses and emergency-room visits.

Wait a second. The President of the United States said Medicare Advantage benefits will not change. This says there are a couple of reasons why he is wrong. One of the reasons is that the rate the government will pay private insurers to run the plan is frozen. It is frozen in 2011 at the 2010 levels, while medical costs are expected to increase an average of at least 6 percent.

I thought we went into this whole health care debate and discussion with the idea of getting the costs down. Now what we are seeing is, no, costs are going to go up in spite of, or perhaps because of, this legislation. ``Such price increases and benefit cuts will help'' the companies ``recoup that difference ..... ''--the losses.

Medicare Advantage benefits are certainly going to change, and they are going to change in a way that is detrimental to the seniors of the country regardless of what the President said today in his townhall meeting.

Then he went on and said the health bill ``will actually reduce the deficit, reduce costs.'' That is what the President said today at his townhall meeting in Maryland.

It is astonishing because I do not believe any person in this Chamber believes that. I do not think anyone listening at home or at the townhall meeting believed it. And the President's Chief Actuary does not believe it. Actually, the Chief Actuary a month or so after the bill was passed, after it was signed into law, released projections that said the health care overhaul will likely cost about $115 billion more--more--in spending over the next 10 years than the original cost projections, taking the total estimated costs to above $1 trillion.

The President says this will actually reduce the deficit and reduce costs. This is at a time of record deficits, when the American people are very concerned about the deficits and the incredible debt.

From the transcript of the President's speech, as he goes through, he says:

And finally, we're going to reduce by half the amount of waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicare system. .....

That is an admirable goal. There is significant waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare system. How much waste, fraud, and abuse is there? I am not sure anyone knows for sure exactly how much there is, but the Associated Press, with a lot of study, has said it is about $47 billion a year--$47 billion a year.

What do the budget people who looked at this health care law say about how good is it going to be, how effective? The President is talking about cutting it in half from $47 billion. If you can save $23 billion a year, that is an accomplishment. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Program, with the integrity provisions--those are the provisions aimed at waste, fraud, and abuse--they are thinking that over the next 4 years, they will save about $2.2 billion and over the next 10 years, they will save almost $7 billion.

Savings are good, but they are going to save $7 billion over 10 years when, according to the Associated Press, we are losing almost $500 billion over 10 years to waste, fraud, and abuse.

The savings, according to the Congressional Budget Office, are minuscule, but yet the President today, talking to this crowd, said we are going to reduce it by half.

I don't know, maybe he is talking about introducing a new law because it sure is not in the health care bill that was signed into law and passed with 60 votes in this body.

After the President went through all of these, he then said:

So that's what the law does. Now, having said that, there--some of the folks who were against health reform in Congress--

I don't think anybody is actually against health reform. But I will say there are a lot of people who are against this bill. He said:

In fact, you have an entire party out there that's running on a platform of repeal.

It is not a party. Sixty percent of the American people are saying we should repeal and replace this health care law.

The President had this meeting, but there are a lot of things the President of the United States did not tell the American people. It is those things--that is the reason 60 percent of the American people are opposed to this new law.

He did not mention that Medicare cuts will be $550 billion, and those are cuts to hospitals, cuts to nursing homes, cuts to home health agencies, cuts to hospice to help people in the final days and hours of their lives. He did not mention that at all.

He did not mention that the new Medicare Director--someone he recently named--loves the British health care system and says we are going to need to ration care. The new Director of Medicare is planning to ration care. We did not hear that mentioned to the seniors today.

We did not hear him mention the fact that up to $18 million has been spent on a mailer about the new health care law that many have referred to as propaganda because it fails to clearly and honestly express what is going to happen to people on Medicare as they cut $550 billion from their health care over the next years.

I do not think he mentioned that one in six hospitals is going to find they are in the red living under the new system. That is what the Chief Actuary has said.

I don't think he mentioned the $25 million plan that was mentioned yesterday in the New York Times: ``White House and Allies Set to Build Up Health Law and Democrats Who Backed It.'' It said:

President Obama and his allies, concerned about deep skepticism over his landmark health care overhaul, are orchestrating an elaborate campaign to sell the public on the law, including a new tax-exempt group that will spend millions of dollars on advertising to beat back attacks on the measure and Democrats who voted for it.

That is what we hear. We now have a health care law that, as Nancy Pelosi said, you have to pass before you get to find out what is in it. The American people are finding out what is in it. Week after week, they are finding some new unintended consequence, something they do not want, something they do not think is good for them. That is why week after week I come back to the floor to talk about a health care law that failed to pay for doctors who take care of patients, failed to pay to train doctors, and failed to deal with lawsuit abuse.

It did have money for a lot of new IRS agents to try to enforce the law that is mandating everyone to buy insurance. But I think if you talk with people in any of our home States, they are going to say: We need more new doctors; we don't need more IRS agents.

That is why I come to the floor with my second opinion, an opinion which says it is time to repeal the legislation and replace it with legislation that is really a health care system and program that is patient centered, that will allow Americans to buy insurance across State lines, that will provide the same tax relief for individuals who buy their health insurance personally--they would get the same tax relief that the big companies get--that would provide individual incentives, such as premium breaks, to encourage healthy behavior, that would deal with lawsuit abuse, and would allow small businesses to join together to provide less expensive health insurance for their employees.

That is why today I offer my second opinion that it is time to repeal and replace this bill and get patient-centered care for the American people.

I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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