Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013 - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor as someone who has just traveled around my home State of Wyoming for the last couple weeks, talking to people, listening to what they have to say. I do it as a doctor as well as a Senator, but people there know me as a doctor because I practiced medicine in Wyoming for 25 years, taking care of families from all around the State. So it is not surprising that in every town I visit, people ask me what is happening with regard to the President's health care law.
People around Wyoming continue to be very worried--worried that there is going to be a new layer of Washington between them and their doctor. People don't want anyone between them and their doctor, not an insurance company bureaucrat, not a Washington bureaucrat. So families are worried they are not going to be able to keep the insurance they have now and maybe insurance that works pretty well for them--insurance they like, they want, and they can afford. But they are concerned they are not going to be able to keep what they have.
Employers are also worried. They are worried they are not going to be able to afford the health care mandates under the President's health care law.
That is what I heard as I traveled around the State. I will be back in Wyoming again this weekend, traveling to a number of communities, and I expect I will hear the same thing this weekend. I am sure Members of the Senate have heard concerns similar to this from people all around their home State, as they visited around and listened to the voters over the last couple weeks.
While we were out hearing from folks and families back home, there has actually been a lot in the national news the last couple weeks making the very same points I was hearing in Wyoming, and that is what I wish to talk about today.
We have had one headline after another about the dangerous side effects of the health care law. For one thing, employers in Wyoming aren't the only ones who are worried about how much the law is going to cost, how it is going to have an impact on them and their businesses and their ability to hire more people.
According to a news survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the health care law's expensive new mandates are now the No. 1 concern of small businesses across the country. Seventy-one percent of small businesses say the law makes it harder for them to hire new workers. One-third say they plan to actually reduce hiring or cut back hours because of the employer insurance mandate. Twenty-two million Americans are out of work or are working less than they would like, and that is what we saw in the dismal jobs report just this last Friday.
You say, why is that? The Federal Reserve's Beige Book came out last month, and companies all around the country are saying: We are not going to hire because of the uncertainties and mandates in the President's health care law.
The recession ended 4 years ago, but the only way our economy is going to get back on track is if we free the private sector to start hiring in far greater numbers than they are willing to do right now. But the President's No. 1 signature accomplishment, his law, makes it actually harder for businesses to hire more people. One would expect the President would want to make laws that would make it easier for employers to hire more people.
There was another headline on how the President's health care law is hurting small businesses. Here is what the New York Times says: ``Small Firms' Offer of Plan Choices Under Health Law Delayed.''
What they are talking about is the promise the President made that his health care law would help small businesses find affordable health care plans. Of course, that is a desirable goal. The problem is the law doesn't bring out what the goals may have been. The law was supposed to create a new insurance market for small employers. That is what they are promised. Their workers would then have a variety of choices so they could pick the plan that worked best for them.
The New York Times article says:
The promise of affordable health insurance for small businesses was portrayed as a major advantage of the new health care law, mentioned often by White House officials and Democratic leaders in Congress. .....
That is what the New York Times says that the President of the United States was telling the American people:
The promise of affordable health insurance for small businesses was portrayed as a major advantage of the new health care law, mentioned often by White House officials and Democratic leaders in Congress. .....
So what is going on? The administration admits things haven't worked out the way they had promised.
They can't meet the law's deadline, so it is going to delay the entire program for a full year to 2015. Of course, the Obama administration says it will not delay the mandate until 2015. So you have to provide the health insurance now, in 2014, but: Sorry. We made some promises, but they are not going to happen until 2015. You still have to pay right now and do this.
So small businesses are going to get hit with the higher costs of providing the insurance, but they don't get the program that was supposed to help them in the first place--the program promised by the Democrats in this body who voted for it and promised by the President of the United States who in many ways went on to deliberately deceive and mislead the American people as a result of what we are now finding is in the health care law. I am happy to see the national press reporting it because we are sure hearing it from people around the country.
What we see now is that if a business wants to offer its workers insurance through an exchange, it has to pick one plan for all the people. The workers are going to get none of the choices they were promised. According to Washington and this administration and this President, now one size has to fit all.
Even in a business where the employees now currently have several choices, they are going to lose their options. They are not going to be able to pick the insurance plan that is right for them and for their families. That is what is happening to Zachary Davis.
Zachary Davis owns a couple ice cream shops and a restaurant in Santa Cruz, CA. He has 20 full-time workers and today he offers them health insurance.
Isn't that the goal? Workers--offer them health insurance. These workers range in age from college students to seniors, so they have different needs at different ages, different fears, different concerns, different needs. What the younger ones prefer are lower premiums and then higher out-of-pocket costs if they happen to get sick. That is because they are healthy and they do not really go to see a doctor very often. The older workers who work in the same company visit doctors more frequently, as would be expected, so they are more interested in a position where their policies maybe have higher premiums but lower deductibles. People want to make choices.
Right now the employees who work for Zachary have actually three different plans that fit their needs. They get to choose. But what Zachary Davis has told CNN is that limiting his workers to a single plan would be a deal breaker and it would keep him out of the exchanges. He said:
That would not be a good fit for us. For a business like ours--and a lot of businesses I deal with on a regular basis--I can't see that making sense.
He is right. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But that is what President Obama's health care law has given the American people--something that doesn't make sense and another broken promise, another hurdle to get in the way of job creators, another failure of the Washington bureaucracy, and another burden on workers who like the insurance they had before and now are not going to be able to keep it.
During the 2 weeks we have been traveling our States and traveling the country, there has been headline after headline. Here is one more headline from an Associated Press story. This headline says: ``Health Overhaul to Raise Claim Cost 32 percent.'' That is a 32-percent average increase in claim costs. This is a new report by the Society of Actuaries.
The Wyoming Tribune Eagle in Cheyenne--this is Wednesday, 27, 2013: ``Health Overhaul Bumps Up Claim Cost 32 Percent. And If Insurance Companies Have To Pay More, You Can Bet We Will, Too.''
``And If Insurance Companies Have To Pay More, You Can Bet We Will, Too.''
On average, insurance companies will have to pay out 32 percent more for medical claims on individual health policies because of the health care law, so that is going to drive up premiums for all of us. It drives up how much hard-working Americans have to pay to get medical care and to buy insurance. Why? The President's health care law.
Here is how the Associated Press summarized it. It said:
Obama has promised that the new law will bring down costs. That seems a stretch now.
This is not me, this is the Associated Press: "That seems a stretch now.'' I would say it is actually an understatement. Costs will not go down because of the health care law because the law does nothing to help costs go down or make them go down. In fact, it does many things that actually cause costs to go up. All of the mandates, all of the new expenses, all of the new taxes--that is all going to add to the average increase of 32 percent. But that is just the average. When we look at the increases in some States, we really start to see how much worse off a lot of people are going to be. In Ohio, we see an increase of 81 percent; in Wisconsin, up 80 percent; Indiana, up 68 percent; right next door to us in Maryland, up 67 percent; Idaho, up 62 percent. In my own State of Wyoming, people are facing a 32-percent increase. It is right at the national average.
This article in the newspaper, when you go to it, it says, "Overhaul increases could top 50 percent for certain States.'' Here we see in many States that is the case. They have a list, State by State, of each of the State's claims--change in claims cost in health overhaul. That is what the American people are facing. These are terrible numbers, but they are absolutely predictable. In fact, some of us did predict that is what would actually happen. The American people cannot afford for health care costs to go up by 81 percent, as we are seeing in Ohio, or even by 32 percent, which is the national average. That is not what the President promised.
Finally, I want to point out just one more headline, one more broken promise the President made. We all remember when the President said that if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it. He said, "No one will be able to take that away from you.'' The President of the United States said, "No one will be able to take that away from you.''
Now we have another story from CNN. It says, "Most Individual Health Insurance Isn't Good Enough For ObamaCare.'' This article talks about a University of Chicago study--talking about Chicago, the President's hometown. The study reported--from CNN--the University of Chicago reported that more than half of the individual insurance plans currently on the market will not be allowed to exist under the President's health care law--more than half. Fifteen million Americans buy individual plans, and half of those plans are going away. Even if these people like their coverage, the President says: Too bad. His health care law is taking it away from them.
Not only will the law eliminate more than half of the plans, most of the ones that remain are going to cost more next year. Why? It is because of what the administration calls the essential health benefits. These are specific individual mandates that require insurance plans to cover a wide range of services. For most consumers, it is going to mean a more extensive and a longer list of benefits. These higher benefits, of course, mean higher costs.
So people cannot just get the insurance that they and their family want, the insurance that is right for them as a family and the insurance that they can afford. No. They have to buy Obama administration-approved health insurance. That is insurance that is going to be much more expensive than what they might want, they might need, or they can afford. It may not even do them any good. So despite what the President has promised to the American people, they are not going to be able to keep the insurance they have. The options that are left to them are going to cost more.
These are just a few of the headlines--a few of the headlines we have seen just since we went out a couple of weeks ago and traveled the States. These are all fresh, new headlines from the last 2 weeks, but every day we get more and more information about the bad side effects of this terrible health care law. The President's health care law is unraveling before our eyes.
The American people knew what they wanted from health care reform. They wanted the care they need from a doctor they choose, at lower cost. That is what the President promised the American people they would get from his health care law, but all the people of the country have seen are rising costs, less choice, and a larger Washington bureaucracy.
It is time for President Obama to finally admit that his health care law is dragging down the American economy. It is time for Congress to repeal this terrible law and replace it with the kind of reform that works.
Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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