Nomination of Chai Rachel Feldblum to Be a Member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, the matter before us is that of a nominee to be Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for a term expiring July 2018. This nominee was asked to serve as a Commissioner by President Obama and was confirmed by the Senate by a voice vote in December 2010 for a term ending July 2013. While her term expired at that date, she can continue to serve until the end of this congressional session, December 2013, so she is still in the position, continuing to serve.

I have gone through her entire biography, and I would have some questions if I were to have an opportunity to visit as a Senator today with this nominee to be Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I would like to ask the nominee if she is willing to forgo Federal employee insurance, which she currently has, to go onto the insurance now forced upon most of America through the President's health care law. Would she, who is now seeking nomination and seeking confirmation, be willing to do what Americans are being asked all around the country to do, people who received letters that said: Sorry, your insurance isn't good enough. Sorry, you can't keep your insurance regardless of what the President may have promised. What would this nominee say? Is the President's health care law good enough for her? Is what the President is promising to Americans good enough for her? I shouldn't even say ``promising''--offering, if they can get it, depending on whether the Web site is working on a given day, whether they can afford it, whether they want it, whether it works for them. Is this something this nominee would think is a good idea for her?

Because, of course, she is in position as Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I would like to ask the nominee regarding her views of employers who are being forced to change health care plans offered to their employees as a result of the Democrat-mandated and passed on party-line votes Obama health care law. What are her views on employers being forced to change health care plans offered to employees because of what this Senate body did?

I would also like to ask the nominee whether she believes an employer who requires some of his or her employees to join the exchange and is OK about exempting other employees--whether that would be a violation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission laws. Does she believe an employer who requires some of his employees to join the exchange while exempting others--would that be a violation of the laws. That is what the majority leader of the Senate has done. Do the laws not apply to the majority leader? Can he decide one way or the other?

We have heard his explanation. I know the Washington Post gave him three Pinocchios, meaning there is a considerable amount of untruth in his explanation. But what about this nominee before us today?

I would also like to hear her thoughts regarding whether people in power should have the right to change rules at any time in a manner that restricts the rights of those whom the rules were intended to protect because that is what has happened on this floor of the Senate in the last couple of weeks. A group broke the rules to change the rules in a way that has denied the minority rights that had been protected for centuries. So I would be interested in hearing what the nominee has to say about that.

It is interesting because the facts that have been brought forth on the floor by the Senate majority leader regarding the filibuster have actually been described as fraudulent: ``Democrats' Filibuster Fraud.''

On November 21, majority leader Harry Reid broke his promise not to employ the nuclear option when he and Senate Democrats eliminated the filibuster on nominations. They did so based on what Senator Hatch once described as a ``filibuster fraud.'' Orrin Hatch, a longstanding Member of this body, probably knows the rules better than any.

I believe they did it in an attempt to divert attention away from this ObamaCare nightmare--people faced with higher premiums, canceled coverage, people finding out they can't keep their doctor, fraud and identity theft which is going on even until today and I think is going to continue to get worse in the future, and higher copays and deductibles.

One of our Senate colleague's staffers was trying to sign up for insurance on Monday, I understand was on a Web site that pretty much looked identical to the government Web site, and what he found was it took him to a page where they asked for his bank account number and his PIN number. I think everyone agrees that is not part of the health care Web site. This is a staff member who works for the Senate and found himself taken through the computer--I should say the broken Web site, easy to maneuver and manipulate--it took him to a page asking for his bank account number and his PIN number.

He then called the help line, spent several hours on hold waiting to talk to people, and they said: Just get off of that Web site. The folks he was talking to even seemed surprised to know that he logged in to what he thought was the correct Web site and what looked identical to the government Web site, but yet there was a problem there.

So I believe what we are seeing is an effort to divert attention away from the ObamaCare nightmare and ensure that the circuit court of appeals will be a rubberstamp for the President's agenda. And what has happened? The Washington Post looked at the comments by the Senate majority leader, who on November 21 said:

In the history of the Republic, there have been 168 filibusters of executive and judicial nominations. Half of them have occurred during the Obama Administration .....

The Washington Post, which looked at it, said: Leader Reid's figures confused cloture motions, which are requests to end debate, with filibusters, the response to those requests.

So just making a request isn't a filibuster; it is actually making a filibuster response to the motion.

They said: This was despite the clear admonition of the June Congressional Research Service Report that cloture motions don't correspond with filibusters.

Apparently Senator Reid did not have a chance to read that or wanted to ignore it. It didn't fit the scenario or the story that he was trying to weave. They went on to say:

Since the majority leader files nearly all cloture motions, Senator Reid himself created the very statistic that he relied upon to force a rule change.

Senator Reid himself by filing all these cloture motions, he is the one who created the very statistic that he relied upon to force a rules change.

Many of these, the Washington Post reports, were clearly unnecessary. In fact they say 32 percent of all cloture motions in the past 4 1/2 years were withdrawn before a vote. Even the fact checker of the Washington Post rejected the majority leader's claim. They said:

But we especially find it hard to get past CRS's admonition that the data in its report should not be used to calculate the number of filibusters, as Reid's office has done.

They have given him a couple of Pinocchios on that one too. It is fascinating that the majority leader of the Senate receives Pinocchio after Pinocchio in the Washington Post for continuing to distort or tell his version of a story which is just not true at all.

I believe all of this is in an effort to distract people from all of the issues that are damning and hurting the President's standing in the eyes of the American people.

It is interesting. You do not have to go too far back in the newspapers. You just go to Wednesday, December 11, yesterday. The Wall Street Journal, page 4, ``Poll: Health Law Hurts president Politically.''

The American people know this is the law that the President forced through, a party-line vote, in the middle of the night, Christmas--and it looks like we may be here Christmas again this year, because of an unwillingness of the Democrats to work together to accept Republican ideas, to talk with their colleagues. Let's see the subheadline here, ``Obama's Job-Performanace Disapproval Rate Rises to All-Time High.''

The President's disapproval rate of his job performance rises to an all-time high of 54 percent. Then it says ``Even As Americans Upbeat On Economy.''

So the President is at an all time high of his disapproval even at a time when people from an economic standpoint believe that things are not as bad as they may be. Why is it? Because of the health care law. People all across the country--the numbers are 5 million now who have lost their insurance, gotten letters from their insurance companies saying sorry, you have lost your insurance. It might have worked well for you.

I talked to folks at home in Wyoming, a ranch family. They have insurance. It works for them. It is what they wanted, it is what they had for many years, but they found out it didn't qualify because it was not good enough. It is interesting to hear the President say better insurance. Not better for them. More expensive, more things to cover that they don't ever need. The reason they lost their insurance is because it didn't fit the President's 10-point criteria. It didn't include maternity coverage.

A woman who knows I am a doctor, knows I practiced medicine in Wyoming for 24 years--and I talked to her at the Wyoming Farm Bureau meeting in Laramie a couple of weeks ago--said: I have had a hysterectomy. She said: Doctor, you know somebody who has had a hysterectomy doesn't need maternity coverage. They are not going to have more babies.

So she lost insurance that the family has had. It worked for the family, and they could afford it. They had it included in their budget, and they lost it because she doesn't have maternity coverage, because she has had a hysterectomy. She had insurance that worked for her.

Who does the President think he is, to say that he knows better than she does, what is right for her and for her family? That is why the President is being hurt politically. It is the health law. It is the mandates on the American people. It is the President and the Democrats in this body saying: We know better than you do. We know what your kids need, we know what your family needs, we know what works in your life.

I will tell you, the President does not know. He has no idea what works for these people at home in Wyoming and that they have made intelligent choices, thoughtful choices. They know what works for them. He doesn't know their lives, and he doesn't know their needs. His disapproval rate--not surprising to me--is at an all time high, and it is well deserved because people are being faced with not just the Web site failures, which drew attention to this, that I believe made the Secretary of Health and Human Services the laughing stock of America because of her comments and how they played forth on the comedy shows, but also and more important, because of what is below the tip of the iceberg, the higher premiums. My friend in Wyoming has found that what she needs to do in terms of the insurance that the President said she needs--it is going to cause their premium to skyrocket. She is going to be forced to buy insurance because the law says all Americans need to buy insurance. She is going to be forced to buy insurance that really they don't need, they don't want, they are never ever going to use, they cannot afford, and it is money not going to be used for other things--for books for the kids, for food for the table, for things around the house. They are going to lose that opportunity. That is what this is all about.

That is why the President's numbers have dropped so significantly. It is interesting when you go through these statistics, findings--and this is a combined poll from the Wall Street Journal and NBC news--the health care law, whether it was a good idea or bad idea. According to this poll: bad idea, 50 percent, good idea, 34 percent--50 percent bad, 34 percent good.

Then they say what is the impact of this health care law on your family? That is what people wonder about. What does it mean to them? What does this mean to them personally? Because it was interesting. On the exit polling from the Presidential election last year with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, people across the country believed at that time that in response to the question of ``cares for someone like me,'' Barack Obama did much better, scored much higher than Mitt Romney.

Now the President is underwater because people are saying he doesn't care about me; he doesn't know about me; doesn't care about me; is not thinking about me, is thinking about his legacy but not thinking what I am going to have to pay in premiums; not thinking about my insurance being canceled; not thinking about me not able to keep my doctor; not thinking about fraud and identity theft; not thinking about the higher copays and deductibles. Right now, in terms of the poll that was in yesterday's Wall Street Journal by NBC news, whether this was going to have a positive or a negative impact on people's lives, fewer than 1 in 8 Americans believe that this health care law is going to have a positive impact on them and their families. Fewer than 1 in 8. It is astonishing that fewer than 1 in 8 people think that this health care law is going to have a positive impact for them and their family.

Yet it was crammed down the throats of all Americans, forcing them to face all of these issues and costs related to that. The poll shows the President's disapproval at the highest rate ever, 54 percent, going back from the time he was elected. In terms of how you look at this--start reading the article.

The federal health-care law is becoming a heavier political burden for President Barack Obama and his party, despite increased confidence in the economy and the public's own generally upbeat sense of well-being, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests.

Disapproval of Mr. Obama's job performance hit an all-time high in the poll, at 54%, amid the flawed rollout of the health law. Half of those polled now consider the law a bad idea, also a record high.

There was the flawed roll out and Web sites can be fixed. The Web site can be fixed--and that is why the Web site failure is only the tip of the iceberg. What has really gotten people mad is the 5 million letters, and we don't even know how many letters went out in Illinois, Ohio, Texas. We don't have those numbers yet. So the numbers of folks who lost their health care coverage that worked for them, that they liked, that number is, I believe, going to be higher than 5 million. So this is going to continue to roll out with people showing huge disappointment. I expect the President's popularity to fall even further.

I think it is going to get even worse come January 1 as people start to go to a doctor and find out that maybe they think they bought insurance through the health care Web site and find out that they actually do not have it. We have people I have talked to that have put in all the information. They spent hours, but the Web site went down. They came back for more hours but don't have confirmation yet. They really do not know if they have insurance yet. They would like to know. They would like to see assurance. They would like to have confidence their government can get something right. They do not see it now. They don't see the President doing what he promised.

The President was on television with President Clinton, at the Clinton World Summit in New York, just 3 or 4 days before the Web site was unveiled, and there was the President sitting with former President Clinton saying that this was going to be easier to use than Amazon. Cheaper than your direct phone bill, and if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

Did the President really believe that or was he so detached, so disconnected from the reality of what is happening in this country that he was not even overseeing his job. This is his signature achievement. Yet it seems like he ignored the implementation process.

For those in this body who served as Governors, as chief executives of States, as the Presiding Officer of the Senate has done, you never let that happen. You might have tested it for yourself: What is it going to look like? I am curious, what happens when people sign on? How does it work? But just to push ``go'' and have this blind confidence that everything is going to be fine and not know and 3 or 4 days before on a world stage saying: Oh, easier than Amazon, I think is very distressing to many people. That is why the President's performance shows such high disapproval, 54 percent. That is why, according to the Wall Street Journal poll and NBC news, the health law is hurting the President politically.

This is not just a survey of a couple of people. This survey is of 1,000 adults. It was conducted between December 4 and December 8. What it did is it found a sharp erosion, they say, a sharp erosion since January in many of the attributes of a President.

What are the attributes you would like to have in a President? What would a nation look to in a President? Attributes that say: This is what we want in our President. Honesty--that is what you would like to have, a President who is honest. Leadership ability to handle a crisis. They say that had kept President Obama aloft through the economic and political turmoil of his first term, but now it is not there anymore. The feeling about the President regarding his own honesty has dropped precipitously.

You do not want our country to have a President who the people think is not honest, but that is where we are right now. I will tell you, he brought it upon himself and he did it intentionally, he did it deliberately and he did it by looking into that camera and intentionally misleading the American people about his health care law--not just in the lead-up to passing the law but continued all the way through. What does the President say? He said if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance, period. It was his punctuation of that sentence that said there is nothing after that. He said if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period. He has continued to say that.

It was interesting, even after the whole debacle, the letters going out, so many people finding their coverage had been canceled, the White House Web site continued with a video of the President saying, ``If you like your coverage, you can keep your coverage, period.'' If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period. Is it any surprise that the American people no longer find the President trustworthy, honest? Is it a surprise, then, that the President finds that the health law is hurting him politically? Is it a surprise that the disapproval of his performance is now at an all-time high? That is what we are dealing with in this country, and yet the President continues to go forth and say, are the Republican ideas?

We have had idea after idea. We tried to visit with the President about those ideas. He wants to hear nothing. He wants to hear nothing. He wants his talking points and he doesn't really have a clear understanding of what damage he has done to America with this law that has hurt so many families across the country and continues to cause pain and suffering and anxiety, and as a result anger, and as a result the health law hurts the President politically. Those are the issues that are in front of us.

Those are the issues that are in front of us.

I have a letter from a gentleman who lives in Cody, WY, that I want to read and share. This came in a couple of days ago online.

For the most part people in Wyoming know me as Dr. Barrasso. I have treated many of them. I have been involved with the Wyoming health fairs and taking low-cost blood screenings to people all around the Cowboy State. I still attend the fairs and visit the small communities. We did a poll there about why people go to health fairs. The No. 2 reason they go is for their health, and the No. 1 reason is to socialize and see other people in their community.

I know the Presiding Officer has seen similar things in his home State when he goes to activities that people go to, and they want to see one another.

This email is by a gentleman who wrote to me and knows about my activities at the health fairs and as a doctor.

He said:

Just got a quote from my insurance agent on Obama care insurance. From $860 I currently spend per month for my family of 4, to $2,400. All with the low deductible of $10,000 per person per year.

That is the other issue: Higher copays and deductibles. This is a big part of what is happening with this health care law. I mean, it is interesting.

This is Monday's Wall Street Journal, dated December 9: ``Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock.'' That is what my friend from Cody, WY, is finding after being hit with the higher deductibles.

I will share some of the things the Wall Street Journal said and then get back to the letter from my friend in Cody.

It says:

The average individual deductible for what is called a bronze plan on the exchange--the lowest priced coverage--is $5,081 per person a year, according to a new report on insurance offerings in 34 of the 36 states that rely on the federally run online marketplace.

That is 42 percent higher than the average deductible of $3,589 for an individually purchased plan in 2013 before much of the federal law took effect.

``Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock.''

Right under the article, ``Health Site Snafus Plague Maryland.'' I understand that is a State that has their own exchange. That is not even a Federally run exchange. When the President says the States are doing such a great job, and if we let the States do all of these things, we wouldn't have all of these problems. Maryland is having huge problems, as are quite a few of the States.

Getting back to the letter written by this gentleman from Cody, WY, who was hit with an incredibly high deductible--higher than the average. The average is over $5,000, which is higher than it was last year for people around the country. He said:

I'm not sure what planet they think I live on, but there is no way I can spend more than 1/2 of my monthly income on insurance. For the first time in my adult life I will soon be without insurance.

What does President Obama have to say about that? How does the ObamaCare health care law--I thought it was written in a way that people would get insurance, not lose insurance. Wasn't that the purpose of this? This gentleman said this is the first time in his life he will be without insurance. Why? Because of the law.

He said: ``What does it matter if my 18-year-old children can stay on my insurance plan if I can't afford to keep one?''

I mean that is the big talking point on the other side of the aisle; young people up to age 26 can stay on their parents' health care plan. I think it is a good idea to allow young people to stay on their family's insurance plan. Of course the President tends to add in that it is free, and it is not free. There is a cost to that. I think it is a good idea to help with families.

As this gentleman from Cody, WY, says:

What does it matter if they can stay on the insurance plan if I can't afford to keep one? Also all the air time to pre existing conditions are meaningless if I can't afford to keep a plan.

I feel greatly blessed to have the good paying job that I have. It puts me above the pay level that would allow me to get any subsidies.

He has a family of four and can't get subsidies. He said: ``By the way, with the system in place this year, I wouldn't have needed subsidies.'' With the current system he wouldn't need subsidies, but when he goes from $860 to $2,400, he can't afford it even though he doesn't qualify for subsidies. Yes, we see the genius of the Obama health care law by ignoring what happens in real people's lives.

I think it is interesting to see that the people who wrote this law wrote it behind closed doors. I know the President said this evening he was not a Member of this body at the time, but it was written behind closed doors through that door of the Senate. The people who knew the most about what is in that law, they seem to be the very people who have been excluded by the majority leader from having to live under it. Those are the people who got the exemption, and they are the ones who know what is in it.

It is so ironic that the majority leader of the Senate would say that his people who helped to write this law don't have to live under it. The Washington Post calls him on it. Yet the rest of America has to live under what is not good enough for the majority leader's own staff. It is ironic and sad to see a day like this come to our country.

As this gentleman says, he has never needed to have subsidies before. He said: ``I have never needed them in the past and would like to continue to never get a handout from my government.'' This is an independent individual. He doesn't want a subsidy. He is not asking for a subsidy. He just wants the insurance that worked for him and his family for all of these years, and now he has no insurance.
He said:

I employ about 35 people with my company. When we first opened about a year and 1/2 ago we were talking about getting some sort of coverage. It became very clear that we will not be able to do this .....

They have 35 employees, so under the 50, but still wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to give people coverage. He said:

It became clear that we will not be able to do this, and have stopped any of our plans to provide this in the future. We also know for sure that we cannot afford to ever employ more than 50 people as we continue to grow, there is an upward limit on how many people we will hire.

That is as a result of the law and not because the business is not there and not because the economy won't support it. It is not because they don't want to employ more people, and not because they don't want to help their community. Because of the health care law, they are putting a cap on the size of their business.

He said:

Simple economics, Obamacare is a job killer in Wyoming. It has never been easy to be in business, that is part of the fun of being successful. It is discouraging when our federal government limits the American dream for everyone.

The Federal Government is limiting the American dream for everyone. He said: ``I am thankful for your efforts, but from my office chair in Cody, it is already too late.''

I know I am not the only person in this body who is getting letters like this. I know people who actually voted for the health care law are getting letters like this. I am not sure what kind of responses they are giving them. We call these people. The staff has worked with them, and I visit with them when I get home on the weekends to listen to folks.

But when we look at that sort of letter and that sort of well thought out rational approach from somebody who is working and has had insurance their whole life, that provides for his family and builds a business in a community, hires people, wants to provide insurance and now says: Not going to provide insurance, going to limit our growth, and my family loses insurance--why? It is because of a health care law that I think the President--I don't know if he had any idea of what the impact of this was going to be. We came to the floor on this side of the aisle day after day and week after week talking about why when you read the law, it is a real problem. We talked about why the concerns expressed by the American people should have been listened to but regrettably were not listened to, and why I think it is a terrible mistake and very harmful to the American people.

It is not just the Web site. It is the higher premiums that my friend from Cody is hearing about because his coverage was canceled because it wasn't good enough according to the President.

We will get to whether he could keep his doctor or not in a second. We have talked about higher copays and higher deductibles, and those are the things we are facing now in this country. People are noticing them around my State and all around the 50 States. Doctors are noticing it.

I was in my medical office last week talking to some of my colleagues--my former medical partners. They are being swamped right now with folks coming in for care. This is not just in the middle of Wyoming. This is all across the country.

I talked to a surgeon yesterday on the faculty at Duke University. He had the same story there. So we are seeing it east and west and north and south. Doctors' offices are being swamped with patients who have insurance now.

The President's health care law was to make sure that more people got more insurance and coverage after the first of the year. These are people who have insurance now and are afraid they will not have it after the first of the year. They don't know if they will have it. If they had to go onto the exchanges, they haven't gotten confirmation from the exchanges yet. They are anxious about that; they are also angry.

They don't know if they are going to be able to keep their doctor, which gets to the point of ``can't keep your doctor.'' So what they are doing is going to their doctors' offices now and saying: I have been putting this off for a while--my shoulder that has been bothering me or my hip or my knee, and I want to get it taken care of now while I know you are still my doctor. I know that I can still come to you at least until the end of the year, and I know for sure I still have insurance right now.

Hospitals, medical offices, and clinics are all being swamped by patients trying to get caught up with things they may have put off for a while. They don't know what will happen come January 1st, and I will tell you neither does the President of the United States. I think the President doesn't know what will happen on January 1.

I think he is standing there with his fingers crossed and hoping it doesn't get any worse. I will tell you. I think it will get worse with more people, with sticker shock of higher premiums, and coverage canceled. People are going to find out all across the country they can't keep their doctor.

Fraud and identity theft is going to get worse as more cases get reported, and we are going to see more and more people not being able to pay their deductibles.

I wanted to spend a second on this issue--on the whole issue of the President's promise that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. As a doctor, there is a very special relationship between a doctor and a patient and a patient and a doctor. It goes both ways.

I think it was very telling, as well as distressing to many people, this past Sunday when on one of the Sunday news shows, Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel's brother, who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a physician in the academic setting--one of the interviewers asked him: Was it a true statement, ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?'' He said: The President never said you could go to all of these other people and specialists. The interviewer said: Wait a second. Let's get back to if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Ezekiel Emanuel basically said if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor if you are willing to pay more.

That is not what the President said. The President used the punctuation point, used that period at the end of his sentence: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period. Now we have Ezekiel Emanuel on the Sunday shows saying: Well, the President never really said that. But he did. He said it dozens of times.

Folks in this body have asked me about the bond between a doctor and a patient, and I think the President knew very well about that bond when he made the promise that if you like what you have, you can keep it. So I put pen to paper and had an editorial in yesterday's Investor's Business Daily--Wednesday, December 11, 2013--called ``A Special Bond Deeply Severed By ObamaCare.'' I would like to share some of those thoughts with my colleagues today because I think that is a special bond. As a doctor, I know what that bond is like with my patients.

I write in this column:

A central architect of the president's health care law admitted this week that the often repeated promise that ``if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor'' simply isn't true.

Instead, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel explained that if you like your doctor, you will simply need to pay more to keep your doctor.

I write:

As a physician, I know firsthand how this will hurt many Americans.

Families look to doctors as trusted friends, as confidants and as counselors and turn to them for advice in making life and death decisions.

In Wyoming, patients have included me in graduations, in weddings, and asked me to serve as a pallbearer. They have asked me to pray with them, to referee family disputes, and to provide reassurance when a doctor they did not know was called in to consult.

I go on:

Norman Rockwell's painting ``Doctor and Doll'' tells the story.

I think people here can kind of visualize that picture.

A little girl holds up her doll as the trusted family doctor listens to the doll with his stethoscope. The caring, compassionate physician takes the time to reassure the concerned little girl.

The doctor-patient relationship is a very special bond. It requires faith and trust for a patient to allow me to cut into their body to remove a tumor, to replace a warn-out joint, to fix a broken bone, to repair a torn ligament and, above all else, to do no harm.

The President knew of the special relationship between people and their doctors. That is why when he was trying to gain support for his health care law, he made a clear and simple promise to the American people. The President said, ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period.''

Now people across the country are finding they can't keep their doctor.

The same law that has caused millions of Americans to lose the health insurance that worked for them is now causing people to lose their doctors.

People shopping for insurance on government exchanges and people going to the Web site are being forced to purchase insurance for things they don't want, don't need, or will never use.

To keep costs down, many of these policies limit the doctors and limit the hospitals that patients can use.

So not just the doctors, the hospitals as well, including the Mayo Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center--they are excluded from many insurance networks.

Some of the best children's hospitals in the country are also excluded from the exchanges. This means a child with cancer--

And there have been articles about this--

may lose access to his or her doctor and the specialty hospital because of this law.

Come January 1, there are kids in this country who are not going to have the ability under their new plans to go to the hospitals that have been treating these young people.

In New Hampshire--

There are two Senators here from New Hampshire, one on either side of the aisle.

In New Hampshire, 10 of the state's 26 hospitals--

So there are 26 hospitals; 10 of the State's 26 hospitals--

are excluded from the only carrier offering insurance in the exchange.

There is only one carrier in the exchange. I remember the President talking about all of this competition. There is 1 carrier in the exchange. There are 26 hospitals in the State, and 10 of them are excluded from the only carrier that is offering insurance.

I will tell my colleagues that this next sentence is fascinating.

The head of the medical staff of one of the excluded hospitals--

This is the chief of staff of the hospital--

learned that her plan does not even allow her to seek treatment at her own hospital where she is the chief of staff.

It is unbelievable.

We take a look at that and say: How could this have happened? But that is the law that was passed, and that is the 7-foot tower of regulations that has come out from the bureaucracy.

I write:

The situation could be equally bad for seniors on Medicare.

For seniors on Medicare, if you can't keep your doctor, it is a really big deal. It is sometimes difficult for a senior on Medicare to find a doctor. If they get one and then they like that doctor, they want to keep the doctor. As we have seen, seniors sometimes move to other communities to be closer to their kids and grandkids. To find a doctor is a struggle, it is a challenge, but I think the situation could be equally bad for Medicare, and here is why, and I wrote about it in this editorial in the Investor's Business Daily yesterday:

Thousands of doctors caring for seniors on Medicare Advantage--

And about one in four people is on this program called Medicare Advantage.

Thousands of doctors caring for seniors on Medicare Advantage have been dropped from their networks. Those Medicare patients will now be challenged with finding a new doctor to take care of them.

The president's health care law is making it harder for doctors as well as patients.

It is not just the patients; it is very hard for doctors.

Doctors know their patients' health history, they know their families, they know their lives. Doctors value the personal relationship as much as the patient does.

That's why people become doctors in the first place--to take care of their patients.

In my graduating class, the way we felt about it--and I was invited back to speak at the commencement. I think it was about the 30th year after I had graduated that I got invited back as a guest speaker, talking to those medical students who were graduating. That is the same reason people continue to go into medicine. They want to take care of patients. They are intellectually stimulated and challenged by all the new advances, but people go into medicine to take care of their patients.

In this editorial, I say:

Even if someone is able to keep their doctor, they won't necessarily be able to spend as much time with that doctor as they might like. That's because nearly two-thirds of the doctors expect to spend more time on paperwork under the requirements of the new law.

So doctors are going to have to spend more time on paperwork. Some of this is done with computers, with electronic medical records, but there are still paperwork-keeping activities. It is interesting because so often doctors have the computer in the office with the patient, and patients feel the computer that is mandated under the health care law is interfering, with the doctor looking at the computer screen rather than looking at the patient. So this is all having a significant impact.

I conclude by saying:

This is not at all what the president promised. People all across America put their faith and trust in Barack Obama when they elected him President.

It's the same kind of faith and trust they have in their doctor. When patients lose trust in their doctor--or citizens lose trust in their president--it is extremely difficult to regain.

That is why--going back to yesterday's Wall Street Journal: ``Health Care Law Hurts President Politically''--the disapproval rate has risen to an alltime high of 54 percent. Fifty-four percent disapprove of the President.

I go on to say in this article, which is what happens:

I continue to hear from my patients in Wyoming. They have always had my home phone number. They are anxious. They are angry. They call me at home. They know what they wanted from health care reform. What they wanted was access to quality, affordable care.

That is what the President talked about in his speeches, but that is not what he delivered in his health care law.

That's not what they got with this law. Now, many face losing the doctor who has always been there for them.

If President Obama wants to regain the trust of the American people, he will sit down with Republicans to deliver reforms that will help all Americans and fully protect the doctor-patient relationship.

After all--

And I hear this at home in Wyoming--

President Obama has his own doctor at the White House who is dedicated to his care. I'm sure he values that relationship just as much as other Americans value their relationship with their doctor.

So that is what I felt when I wrote this article called ``A Special Bond Deeply Severed By ObamaCare'' in yesterday's--December 11--issue of Investor's Business Daily, that people can't keep their doctor and there are great concerns about that, and they are being impacted in so many ways.

It is interesting. Since this health care law passed, I have come to the floor just about every week with a doctor's second opinion about the health care law to talk about ways that I felt this health care law was bad for patients, bad for doctors and nurses, physician assistants, and others who take care of patients, and why I thought it was terrible for the taxpayers. But it seems that in recent weeks we can pick up any newspaper and there is a story basically saying this law is bad for people.

This is the New York Times, and they support the law. This past Monday, Robert Parry, a well-known journalist who writes frequently on the topic of the health care law and on health exchanges, said:

Premiums may be low, but other costs can be high. For months, the Obama administration has heralded the low premiums and medical insurance policies on sale in the insurance exchanges created by the health care law, but as consumers dig into the details--

Which is something I was asking for on this Senate floor a number of years ago when the law passed: Will the Democrats please dig into the details to see what impact this is going to have on people in terms of higher premiums, in terms of canceled coverage, in terms of trying to keep their doctor, in terms of higher copays and deductibles, in terms of people on Medicare trying to find a doctor to take care of them.

As consumers dig into the details, they are finding that the deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs are often much higher--

Often much higher; not a rare case--

than what is typical in employer-sponsored health plans, which says that the exchanges are not going to be helping many people.

I found it interesting--talking a little about people not being able to keep their doctors but also not being able to keep their hospitals--why is that? I think we are seeing a number of these exchanges and policies being offered. They realize that the people who go to certain hospitals have more serious conditions, likely more expensive, and as a result don't include those hospitals.

In the Financial Times this week, ``Healthcare insurers cut costs by excluding top hospitals.'' This was Monday of this week, and we are seeing this week after week, which is why I have been coming to the floor with great regularity to share with this body what people across the country are seeing.

It says:

People buying insurance plans under ``ObamaCare'' will have limited access to some of the leading U.S. hospitals, including two renowned cancer centers, as insurers try to cut costs.

There is a picture of MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. It says the plan will not cover treatment at the Houston cancer center. I didn't even get into that in my article. I talked about pediatric hospitals, and I talked about New Hampshire hospitals. But we are talking about major cancer hospitals that are not included in the exchanges for the most part, and that is what we are seeing all across the country.

You can kind of compare it to what kind of car you could buy. What kind of coverage can you get. But the bottom line is people were misled by the President and people feel deceived by this President.

Tuesday's Washington Post: ``Under health law, insurers limiting drug coverage.'' ``Costs may soar for those with HIV, other ailments.'' This is not on the back page. This is on the front page of the Washington Post. This is all as a result of what the Democrats, in a party-line vote, passed and forced upon the country.

That is what is going on here. We have a health care law that people are very uncomfortable with, and they are going to continue to let the President know that, which is why he is being hurt, his disapproval is the highest ever, and what has been sharply eroded are folks' belief in this President's honesty and his leadership ability to handle a crisis.

This is a crisis for the President. This is a crisis for the country. What is the President doing about it? He is blaming the Republicans for a law that passed with no Republican votes. He is blaming the Republicans for an idea that was his and was forced through on party-line votes, without Republican input, written behind closed doors, right through those doors over there, by people who have now been excluded, do not have to go under the health care law. Yet in the Washington Post: ``Harry Reid's explanation for why not all of his staff is going on ``ObamaCare' ''--and the big three Pinocchios. Remember the story of Pinocchio, the boy whose nose grew whenever he told falsehoods. That is what the Washington Post has to say about the majority leader of the Senate in not making all of his employees live under what the rest of the country is having to deal with right now.

I think it is very distressing. That is what we are facing. The country is facing higher premiums. Are people going to not have Christmas because they are, instead, having to use that money to pay their January premium? Are they going to not pay the January premium? How does that play into all this? Are they going to decide: I don't think I am going to have insurance, like my friend from Cody who wrote to me, who has had insurance all of his life but not now.

We have a Senator from Wyoming, the other Senator, the senior Senator, Mike Enzi. He was one who was also sounding the alarm during this entire debate. He saw the impacts beforehand. It was interesting. There was a letter to the editor in the Powell Tribune, a newspaper in Wyoming, that talked about what we saw coming with this health care law. It was written by someone from Gillette, a Marion Scott. The headline is: ``ENZI saw ACA impacts beforehand. ..... '' It says:

Dear Editor:

Fox News had a very interesting and informative program Tuesday evening Nov. 6 on ``The Kelly Files with Megyn Kelly.''

As anyone who watches Fox News knows, they are covering the beginning effects of the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, as it is being implemented. Megyn Kelly began her program stating she had a special guest who had predicted three-and-one-half years ago almost exactly what will happen when the Obamacare law goes into effect this October.

Her special guest was our own Wyoming senior Senator Mike Enzi and he had made his predictions in a speech on the Senate floor three-and-one-half years ago. He was then called a fearmonger and radical rightwinger.

And he was. That is what they called him, as Senator Enzi went to the floor because of his concerns that you would not be able to keep your insurance. He had actually read the Federal Register, saw the regulations that came out, and he said: Millions of people are going to lose their insurance. He said it from right here at this desk over here. He came to the Senate floor. He said it 3 1/2 years ago, and those on the other side of the aisle voted against Senator Enzi's proposal that would actually let people keep their insurance. It was the regulations regarding grandfathered insurance policies, that people would be able to keep their policies. That was the vote. Those on this side of the aisle all voted to allow people to keep their policies because that is what the President promised them. Folks on the other side of the aisle voted against Senator Enzi's proposal.

But those on the other side called Senator Enzi ``a fearmonger and radical rightwinger.''

It says:

Senator Enzi was probably one of a very few elected officials who had actually read the bill.

Senator ENZI, it says, was one of the few elected officials who actually read the bill. I believe that. Who can forget NANCY PELOSI saying: First you have to pass it before you get to find out what is in it. That video has been played and played again and again. I believe that many of the people who voted for it never did read it. I believe they did not read the bill. I believe they did not really understand it, and part of it is, I believe, they actually believed the President when he said: If you like what you have, you can keep it. If you like your insurance, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. So they took this as an article of faith.

I read the bill. Senator Enzi read the bill. I know a number of our Members who read it were very concerned and came to the floor and spoke about different parts of the bill. I can remember Senator Susan Collins standing here with her sign about the impact on small businesses and how detrimental it was going to be. I remember Senator Olympia Snowe down here on the floor focusing on how it was going to impact businesses in Maine. Yet all of these concerns that we raised, which are now coming home to roost today, were ignored on the other side of the aisle.

This woman continues and concludes by saying:

With this kind of representation in the Senate I would ask Wyoming voters this question. Is now a good time to send a new Senator to Washington and lose this experience and seniority?

I will tell you, I am proud to stand with Senator Enzi, and he saw it coming. He saw it coming 3 1/2 years ago with the amendment on the Senate floor. We voted that way, and the Democrats voted essentially to confirm that people would lose their insurance. They were not going to be able to keep it even if they liked it.

So these are the problems that continue to plague the

health care law, continue to plague folks all around the country, as they are trying to deal with something they never anticipated. You kind of think a year in advance: What is going to happen with our kids? What is going to happen? Are we going to need to do something with the car? Patch a hole in the roof? How do we kind of budget for the year? I will tell you, my friend in Cody, WY, never ever saw it coming that he was going to have to go from $860 a month to $2,400 a month for health insurance.

We know that at least 5 million people have gotten letters that they have lost their insurance. For them, I do not think they are going to find it is going to be a very happy holiday season, a very Merry Christmas. I think they are going to be trying to figure out: Do I have insurance or do I go without it, as what is going to happen with my friend there. Those are the things we are looking at.

Then, of course, there is the Web site. It is just interesting. This is an article in this week's Jackson Hole News & Guide in Jackson Hole, WY. ``New health care glitches plaguing Jacksonites. Marketplace insurance companies try to mail paperwork to Jackson street addresses.'' But they only get mail in post office boxes there.

But that is how the Web site was set up. It was not set up so there would be a separate area if you do not have a street address. They need a physical address, but in some places you do not get mail that way, in many places around the country, in certain rural American locations. But the people who wrote it, the people who did this whole thing were rather clueless about how the country works, rather clueless about what happens in people's homes, in people's families, in people's communities. I am sure they are very smart people and got degrees from advanced places but really do not have an idea of what is going on out there.

I also found it interesting that even when the President tried to tell success stories of people who may have had some success under this, it does not even pan out.

A story on CNN: ``Woman Hailed by President as Obamacare Success Story Now Can't Afford Obamacare.''

CNN reports that a woman the President hailed as an ObamaCare success story just realized she won't be able to afford ObamaCare because it is too expensive.

It is too expensive. This is the tragedy. This is a national tragedy, this Obama health care law. It was a self-inflicted wound on our country. No foreign enemy did this to us. The President of the United States, who gave speeches that painted a broad picture of a better world, has delivered a much worse world for folks through this legislation.

I think this is devastating to the country, to patients, to doctors, to the nurses, the caregivers, and to the taxpayers. The reason we needed health care reform in the country was because of the cost of care. That is what this was all about, trying to help people get the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower cost. That is what we were really focused on.

So we needed reform. We needed the right kind of reform--reform that actually lowers patients' costs, improves health, and protects the vulnerable. So that means more affordable insurance options. It means helping people with preexisting conditions. It means protecting quality care for older Americans. We do not have any of that with this President's health care law. This is causing costs to go up, causing quality to go down, causing people to lose their doctor. The President, time and time again, in speech after speech, talked about providing coverage, but not providing care. As a doctor will tell you, there is a huge difference between coverage and care.

This whole thing was predicated on printing up and giving out to people Medicaid cards. Medicaid is a broken system. States will tell you, Governors will tell you, that in many States Medicaid is the No. 1 cost driver of the State. In our home State, it was No. 1 when I was in the State senate. What it meant is that money that went to that then was not able to be used for teachers or schools or students or roads or public safety officers. It is a huge cost driver.

So the issue is we needed to deal with the cost of care. The President says: Put them all in this Medicaid system. What is it? Forty percent--some high number of physicians do not want to take patients on Medicaid because in a sense the reimbursement to doctors who take care of those patients is low enough that you could not even afford to keep the doors of the clinic open if all you saw were Medicaid patients all day.

So doctors want to see and take care of everyone. The idea was to put all these additional people on Medicaid, give them Medicaid cards. But this whole health care law did nothing adequately to address the need for more health care providers. So now you have more people with so-called coverage, but it is empty coverage, it is not quality care because there are not enough people to actually take care of the patients who are now being covered. It is like giving people a bus ticket when there is no bus coming. They can just stand there, but it does not mean they can actually get care. But the President continued to focus on coverage, and coverage does not equal care.

So you take a look at the problems families face with cost and access, and what the President is trying to provide is coverage, but we have seen higher premiums, coverage canceled, which is coverage that worked for many people. Some of these are now being forced into trying to find something. People are losing their doctor and have higher out-of-pocket costs, higher copays, higher deductibles.

You read some of these stories of somebody saying: If I have to pay all this every month, why should I even sign up? Why don't I just pay the fine? Why should I pay all this every month and then have such a high deductible when I am never going to use that much care. Maybe they never will use that much.

So the logic behind this whole thing is baffling to many who have kind of ignored it, I think until now, until October 1 when the Web site went live and subsequently crashed repeatedly. But now they are saying: Hey, I have lost my insurance. That has been the real fracture point, when people see they have lost their insurance that has worked for them. To replace it is going to be something that does not work as well for them and their families and is going to be more expensive.

So we see the public reaction to the law. It is a reaction related to the premiums, related to trying to use the exchanges, and related to whether employers stop hiring, which we have seen from my friend in Cody, WY. We have seen the issues of reduced work hours because there is the regulation, if you are working more than 30 hours a week you get counted toward that 50 employees. So many businesses have lowered the work hours for people, which affects their take-home pay.

The President had some thoughts on that. He said we will just delay the employer mandate for 1 year. That is the mandate in the law that everyone has to--at work they have to supply insurance to the employees. The President may have had some idea that things were going to get sticky for him and he was going to become a little more unpopular with the individual mandate. So he pushed off the employer mandate for 1 year, unilaterally. When is the law the law and when is the law something that the President can take a page out, throw it away and say: Well, we will move that back a year. It has happened about 14 times in this law.

Even when the House tried to give the President authority to do what he did, the Democrats blocked that. It is astonishing. What about the individual mandate? We are going to be fining people--the government. The President is going to be fining people; whether it is a fine, a tax, a penalty, depending on how the Supreme Court states. That is going to go into effect January 1.

The people may not even be able to buy the product they are being fined for not having come January 1. So is the President going to delay the individual mandate as well? There was a vote in the House, a number of people voted with bipartisan support for that. I think it is going to be challenging in the days ahead for the President to get ahead of the situation the country is facing.

The newest numbers were out yesterday with the signup. The Associated Press reported on that:

Health care signups pick up the pace in November playing catchup with a long way to go. President Obama's new health insurance market last month picked up the dismal pace of signups, the administration reported Wednesday. Employment statistics showed 364,000 people had signed up as of November 30 under the health care law. Although that is more than three times the October total, it is less than one-third of the 1.2 million people officials had originally projected would enroll nationwide by the end of November.

So crunch time is coming. Consumers who are afraid they do not have insurance, they have until December 23, if they want to keep their coverage January 1. But as I said earlier, that is why we are seeing so many people across the country who do have insurance going to doctors now--the doctor they know, the doctor they like--to take care of problems that may have been kind of put on the back burner but that they would like to have taken care of now because they are not sure what is going to happen January 1: not sure if they are going to be able to go to the same doctor, not sure if they are going to be able to go to the same hospital, not sure if they are going to be able to have insurance, even though they think they may have insurance. Those are the things the American people are facing.

So as we come to the floor to discuss this nominee, the number of questions I have are those related to what she would think about employers changing things, people not signing up, others being forced to sign up; should she have to live under the law of the land as a government employee, when the Senate majority leader says, well, his people--some of his people do, some do not. These are questions one would expect to have answered. I know we are going to vote on that nominee in a couple of hours. But I think this is something the nominee should be thinking about as we take a look at this health care law and the devastating impacts it is having on people all across the country.

Take a look at what is happening for consumers, people who do not work in Washington, people who do not live in Washington. What you see is that the costs are going to be crippling to them. I stand here amazed that that gentleman from Cody, WY, tripled the cost. I do not know that everybody is going to face that. But the President promised that costs would go down. He promised his health care reform would save American families I think he said $2,500 per year by the end of his first term.

I remember--and I have seen the reel of him saying it--fifteen times he said that. Your insurance premiums will go down by $2,500 by the end of the first term. Go down? They have gone up significantly, thousands of dollars. They have gone up. This is as he was a candidate running for President. He promised his health care reform would save American families $2,500 by the end of his first term.

But for many Americans it is driving the premiums way up; in some cases doubling them, in some cases tripling them. It is happening on the exchanges. It is happening for people who are trying to shop not on the exchanges but if they have lost their policy and have to start paying for a lot of other things, whether it is pediatric dental care, pediatric ophthalmology care. All of those things drive up the costs.

That is the sticker shock of the health care law. So as people continue to learn more about the law, they are going to continue to become more and more displeased, which is why I think we are going to go back to this headline: ``Health care law hurts President politically.'' I know for people in this body that is a big deal. For the President that is a big deal, because the last time I had a chance to speak face to face with the President, he was taking a lot about polls.

But as a doctor, I am more concerned about how the health care law is hurting people's health, hurting their families, hurting their families economically, hurting the help they need, the care they need, interfering with life choices, impacting their quality of life, costing them in terms of disposable income in terms of money they could use for other things, and it is all because of the health care

law.

I am going to continue to come back to the floor on a regular basis to talk, not about the Web site failures because that is just the tip of the iceberg. I expect that the Web site is going to get fixed. It is going to take them a while. It is going to take them a lot longer than they ever suspected, because the day it happened, they described the Web site problem as being a result of heavy traffic. We know on that same day, worldwide, many Web sites had much more traffic. The site broke down with I think less than 1,000 people logging on.

But they said it would be fixed almost immediately. It was not. Here we are. They said it would be fixed by the end of November. So they gave themselves 2 months. It was not. Somebody testified not too long ago in the House to say the back end has not been built, there is 30 to 40 percent of it which has not even been put together.

Ultimately the Web site will get fixed, but the higher premiums are going to continue, people trying to buy insurance for their family that meets the criteria the President has set out which is not based on criteria that works for families or necessary for families. It is just these 10 things government has decided that they think they know what is best for families, when I think families know what is best for them and what they would look for with health insurance and health care.

So we are going to continue to face higher premiums. People are going to continue to have their coverage canceled. It is not just the individuals. Next year when the employer mandate goes into effect, when businesses are forced to make a decision: Do I try to buy health insurance that meets all of those high demands that government says has to be included? Do I meet all of that and face these double or triple higher premiums or do I say just go to the exchanges?

People who work, will they lose their employer-based insurance? I think we are going to see more and more of that. Even the Congressional Budget Office, which took a look at this health care law, said it will happen. They said there are employers who will no longer provide insurance who are providing it now. There are different numbers from different assessments as to how many people are going to be forced off their employer-based insurance, how many folks will lose it. I do not know. I have seen different ranges. But it starts in the low millions and it goes into the tens and twenties and thirties of millions and even higher than that.

So those are the folks who will be losing and having their coverage canceled. Then will those people be able to keep their doctor? The answer there is many will not. Many will not. Many of those who have lost their insurance now are not going to be able too keep their doctor, even if they want to, and even if their doctor wants to keep them.

Doctors do not even know if they are going to be included in a number of these exchanges. They cannot find out, when they go and look and try to see if they can get on the Web site, where are they covered, where are they not included? This has been so poorly thought out and so poorly executed. It has left patients in the lurch, it has left hospitals in the lurch, and it has left doctors in the lurch.

I am astonished that all of those people still have the faith and confidence in the President, which is probably another reason why people do not look to the President now as having either honesty or leadership ability to handle a crisis--to see such a precipitous drop in the view of the President's ability to handle a crisis. Because if they cannot get this right, what happens in terms of a national disaster? How could he respond quickly when he had 3 1/2 years to put together a Web site that apparently he paid very little attention to?

So we are looking at the higher premiums, the canceled coverage, cannot keep your doctor, the higher copays and deductibles are going to continue to plague this country and people. I know people on both sides of the aisle are going to get letters to this effect.

I know the Presiding Officer, when he goes home every night to his home State, hears from people. You stop and fill up with gas, you hear from people. I am hoping other colleagues of ours will actually read their mail, go home, listen to people, to see how devastating of an impact this health care law is having on their lives, their individual lives.

Will there be some people who benefit from this health care law? Oh, yes. But the pain it is causing for millions and millions of Americans is not at all what the President promised them: You like what you have, you can keep it with your insurance. Not true; insurance premiums drop $2,500. Not true; If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Not true.

So I come to the floor to discuss a nominee who very likely is not going to ever have to be living under the President's health care law, is going to go under some other health program, paid for with taxpayer dollars that those taxpayers are not going to have in their own pockets to pay for their own premiums, while she enjoys a government insurance program paid for in a different way by their taxpayer dollars, where she is likely to be able to keep her doctor, not be subjected to the higher premiums, not be subjected to canceled coverage, not be subjected to losing her doctor, not be subjected to the fraud and identity theft, and not be subjected to the higher copays and deductibles.

I would say, if it is good enough for the people of America--that is what President Obama wanted for them--if it is good enough for Members of this body, except for those the majority leader said, oh, no, they know what is in it so they do not need to live under it, I think it ought to be good enough for this nominee as well.

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

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source