Disapproval of the President's Exercise of Authority to Suspend the Debt Limit - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Utah and appreciate his very eloquent remarks. He has been a great leader on health care issues for a lot of years around here and was a fierce opponent of ObamaCare when it passed and laid out very compelling arguments at the time about why we should not adopt this law. Unfortunately, for the people of this country, many of the predictions he made are coming out to be true. I appreciate the leadership he provides for us as a member of the Finance Committee and his continued advocacy for policies that are good for consumers in this country when it comes to the issue of health care.
This Friday marks a full month since healthcare.gov went live. This is the Web site that, in conjunction with the new health care law, was promised as a solution to all of the problems in the delivery and cost of health care in this country.
To be frank, I do not think anybody on either side of the political aisle would deny this fact: These past 29 days have been nothing short of a disaster. The administration will not disclose how many Americans were actually able to enroll in plans. They are not forthcoming when it comes to disclosing exactly what the problem is with the Web site, other than calling the problems glitches. Well, glitches refer to temporary problems that are easily remedied. The problems with the health care law cannot merely be called glitches. The problems go deeper than technical problems on a Web site which, by the way, cost $400 million to develop.
As the President said last week, ObamaCare `` ..... is not just a website. It's much more.'' Well, that is true. It is much more. It is a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation that is resulting in real-life consequences for middle-class Americans.
My colleagues and I, the Senator from Utah and others, have been speaking about the broken promises of this legislation since it came to the floor of the Senate almost 4 years ago. We know this law will not work as promised. Unfortunately, thousands of Americans are realizing it too as they face higher costs and canceled insurance plans.
Many Americans are experiencing sticker shock when it comes to their health care costs. Middle-class Americans already struggling to make ends meet are now facing steep premium increases in the ObamaCare exchanges.
Last month, Avik Roy of Forbes reported on a recent study that said:
ObamaCare will increase insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97 to 99% and for younger women by an average of 55 to 62%.
In my home State of South Dakota, that is more than just a statistic; that is a grim reality facing thousands of young men and women.
By comparing a typical low-cost plan for a healthy 30-year-old person in my State of South Dakota this year with a bronze plan that they would be able to get in South Dakota's health care exchange next year, the premium increases are nothing short of staggering. Younger women are going to face a 223-percent premium increase and younger men are going to face a 393-percent premium increase when you compare data from HHS with data from GAO about premiums in South Dakota in January of this year. That is more than a $1,500 annual increase for women and a $2,000 increase in health care premiums each year for 30-year-old men in my State of South Dakota.
But it is not just South Dakota. It is not confined to South Dakota alone, and people in my State are not alone in their experience of sticker shock. Look at what is happening in the State of Nebraska where premium increases are 143 percent or in Georgia where premium increases are 198 percent. Money that could be used to pay off student loans, save for a home, or start a family is now going to be used to pay for ObamaCare.
According to a new analysis by Avalere Health, Americans could face steep cost-sharing requirements--such as copayments, co-insurance, and deductibles--layered on top of their monthly premiums.
It is clear that health care costs are going up--they are not going down--particularly for younger Americans.
Additionally, President Obama promised that health care premiums would go down by an average of $2,500 per family. Well, if you look at what family premiums have done, they have actually jumped by more than $2,500 since ObamaCare became law.
While costs continue to increase despite the President's promises to the contrary, household income has fallen by over $3,700 since President Obama first took office. No IT specialist can fix the problem of increased health care costs due to ObamaCare. The only fix is to repeal this law and to start over.
In addition to higher costs, families are discovering other grim news. For example, they cannot keep the plan they like, despite the fact that the President promised they would be able to. Over and over the President told Americans they would be able to keep the insurance they have.
Well, millions are now facing health insurance cancellation notices due to ObamaCare. That number is expected to increase up to nearly 10 million by the end of this year. In fact, just this morning, CBS News published a story. The headline read, ``More than 2 million people getting booted from existing health insurance plans.'' These are Americans who had coverage they liked and now cannot continue to purchase.
Finally, after dozens of media reports of Americans who are losing plans they like, the White House spokesman said, it is true that some Americans will not be able to keep the health care plan that they like under ObamaCare. Well, you do not have to tell people in this country, as Deborah from Westchester, CA, said in an article last week in the Los Angeles Times:
All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it ..... I'm infuriated because I was lied to.
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield is being forced to cancel plans that cover 76,000 individuals in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC, due to changes made by President Obama's health care law. That represents more than 40 percent of the 177,000 individuals covered by CareFirst in those States.
President Obama said on July 21, 2009: If you like your current plan, you will be able to keep it. Let me repeat that. He said: If you like your plan, you will be able to keep it. That is from 2009.
But he also went on to say, ``I won't sign a bill that somehow would make it tougher for people to keep their health insurance.'' That is from another conference he had with bloggers back in 2009. It is abundantly clear that this is not a simple misstatement or a glitch in the law, it is another broken promise that reveals serious underlying problems with the core principles of this law.
No IT specialist can fix the problem of canceled plans due to ObamaCare. The only fix is to repeal this law and to start over. The President promised the people could keep a health care plan they liked. But an NBC News article published yesterday shows that the administration knew as early as 2010 that this was not going to be the case.
NBC is reporting that 50 to 70 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually--in the individual marketplace--can expect to receive a cancellation letter or the equivalent over the next year, because their existing policies do not meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. All say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience ``sticker shock.'' You do not have to look any further than George Schwab, a 62-year-old man from North Carolina who said he was ``perfectly happy'' with the plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, the plan he currently had, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The comparable plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible. The best option he has found on the exchange so far offered a 415-percent jump in premiums, to $948 a month.
The deductible is less--
He said.
But the plan doesn't meet my needs. Its unaffordable. I am sitting here looking at this, thinking we ought to just pay the fine and just get insurance when we're sick.
That is what Schwab said.
Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not, but that's fixable. That's just tip of the iceberg. This stuff isn't fixable.
That is from Mr. Schwab of North Carolina. That is just one of many stories out there about how this law is affecting average Americans, so much so that now even Democrats have come out criticizing parts of the health care law. Most recently there were 10 Senate Democrats who asked the administration to delay the deadline to sign up for ObamaCare before the tax on the individual mandate kicks in.
While I agree that Americans should not be expected to pay a fine for not having a product they cannot even access, delaying implementation does not solve the underlying problem that this bill is simply bad policy. It was a partisan bill. It was rushed through without adequate forethought in the implementation problems and the serious adverse effect it would have on Americans' daily lives.
Giving people more time to try to navigate a broken Web site with glitches is not going to fix this underlying fundamental flaw in this law. A majority of Americans, 56 percent, believe the Web site glitches are part of a broader problem with the health care law. ObamaCare is more than a Web site. Its real-life consequences squarely hit middle-class Americans.
Americans are facing sticker shock discovering they are being dropped from an insurance plan they like. As one woman said: I was all for ObamaCare until I found out I was paying for it. That too was a story that the LA Times ran over the weekend. ObamaCare is not ready for prime time. The President has got a new healthcare.gov czar, Jeffery Zients, who has been tasked with coming in and trying to fix the Web site by the end of November. But a fix to the Web site by the end of November does not rectify the underlying problems with this law. The problems with this law are more than just problems with a Web site. We need to continue to work to repeal the onerous parts of this law and replace it with solutions that actually lower the cost of health care and give Americans continued access to a doctor they choose at a cost they can afford.
Republicans here at the time when this law was being debated and passed in the Senate several years ago and subsequent to that time have consistently put forward solutions to the health care challenges that we face in this country that do not entail having government take over literally one-sixth of the American economy. As we can see from the rollout, the government does not do complicated things very well.
This is a disaster at the rollout, but it is a train wreck in terms of substance and what it is going to do and the harm it will cost middle-class Americans. There are so many better solutions. We should allow people to buy insurance across State lines, create interstate
competition, allow market forces to drive insurance costs down, allow people and businesses to join groups so they can get the benefit of group purchasing power, do away with the issue of defensive medicine by getting rid of a lot of the junk lawsuits that are clogging up our legal system in this country, allowing people to have a tax credit where they can buy their own insurance and use their judgment and allow for transparency when it comes to pricing and outcomes so that the market in the competition that exists out there works in a way that makes insurance rates come down for everybody and improves the quality of health care in this country.
There are so many good ideas out there that do not involve a government takeover of health care and the results we have seen that has caused. So I hope that not only will the American people who I think are quickly coming to the conclusion that this is a bad law, it is a flawed policy to start with, but Members of Congress here in Washington, DC, Members of the Senate will also come to that conclusion and will decide it is time to not only delay this but to repeal it and start over.
We need a do-over. The American people need a do-over. We need an opportunity to put policies in place that actually put downward pressure on insurance rates in this country, rather than increasing them, which is what we have seen with ObamaCare, dramatic increases for many people across this country, loss of coverage that people like. They were told by the President repeatedly, over and over the President went out there and said: If you like the insurance you have, you can keep it. We now know that is not true. We know that the administration knew that was not true.
So it is time we acknowledge we need a do-over. The American people need a do-over. We need health care policies in this country that drive down costs for people, for families, middle-class Americans, that improve the quality of health care delivery in this country, and that do not create costly harm to the economy.
We hear over and over that the mandates and the requirements and the costs associated with ObamaCare are making it more difficult and more expensive to create jobs in this country. We are seeing an economic growth rate that is sluggish, in the 1-percent to 2-percent range. We are seeing the lowest labor participation rate literally in the last 35 years, since Jimmy Carter was the President of the United States, chronically high unemployment, lower take-home pay, an economy that is suffering from too much cost and too many policies that actually make it more difficult and more expensive to create jobs.
We need to be looking at health care policies that improve coverage, lower costs, and make it less difficult and less costly to create jobs in this economy so we can get Americans back to work, we get our economy growing and expanding at a more robust rate and improve the standard of living and the quality of life for people all across this country.
This policy, the ObamaCare health care policy, was ill-fated, was misguided from the beginning. Now we are seeing the effects and the results of that. Hopefully, politicians in Washington, DC, on both sides of the aisle will come to the correct conclusion; that is, it is time to start over and do this the right way.
I yield the floor.
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