Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today because I noticed that the minority leader, the Senator from Nevada, had some nice things to say about me on Monday in his remarks. He said that I was ``relentless'' in my ``condemnation of ObamaCare.'' Those are his words. I appreciate the minority leader's kind remarks, because he is right. As a doctor, I am relentless in my condemnation of the President's health care law, a law that has done incredible harm to so many people all across this country.

Minority Leader Reid also said that he had the facts about the law. Most of those facts seemed to come from a New York Times opinion column by the renowned liberal icon Paul Krugman.

So let me share some real facts with the minority leader. The insurance plans offered in the health care exchanges are so expensive that they are a horrible deal for most Americans. That is why the President had to give out subsidies--to help hide the costs. The Congressional Budget Office said that Washington will spend $850 billion on those subsidies over the next decade. That is a fact.

According to a new study by the health research company Avalere, ObamaCare plans are extremely unpopular among people who don't get the huge subsidies to buy the plan. Only 2 percent of the people who don't qualify for subsidies have actually bought insurance through the exchanges. That is a fact. It is an alarming sign of how high the cost of ObamaCare really is.

It is not just the premiums that are sky high. This year, the average deductible for ObamaCare's silver plan is almost $3,000 for a single person and more than $6,000 for a family. Now, that is according to something called HealthPocket, which is a Web site that helps people actually compare insurance plans. That is a fact, and $6,000 is a lot of money for a hard-working family to pay for their deductible.

Now, the minority leader said that Paul Krugman's opinions should be treated like facts--not as facts but like facts--because as Senator Reid said, ``this isn't some high school teacher talking about the merits of ObamaCare.'' Well, I agree on that point. High school teachers are far more likely to have had actual experience with the damage that is done by the ObamaCare health care law than has this New York Times columnist.

That is what we learned from a report at KMOX TV in St. Louis on April 23. Their report talked about the Parkway School District in Missouri. It was Senator Reid who said this isn't some high school teacher. Well, this report from St. Louis said ObamaCare is forcing the school district to outsource the employment of substitute teachers. Why would they want to do that? It is in the face of a $4 million penalty for not offering health insurance to the part-time teachers. That is a fact. And those substitute teachers are real people who are being hurt by President Obama's health care law.

Here is another fact reported by Politico on Monday afternoon.

This was their headline on April 27: ``Study: ACA exchange enrollees take tax hit.''

According to a new study by the tax preparers at H&R Block, almost two-thirds of people enrolled in ObamaCare exchanges had to pay back some of their subsidy with their taxes this month. The average amount people owed the IRS was $729. That is a fact. It is a big hit to a lot of families who thought they were going to get help to pay for their ObamaCare premiums. It does not even count the people who decided that the insurance was just too expensive and decided not to buy it. According to H&R Block, those people paid the IRS an average tax penalty of $178. That is a fact. It is only going to be higher next year when people sit down and fill out their taxes.

I remember another speech Senator Reid gave on the floor on ObamaCare. On February 26, 2014, he said: ``Despite all that good news, there's plenty of horror stories being told.'' ``All of them are untrue.''

That was Senator Reid a year ago.

Republicans had been citing--this is Senator Reid--examples of people being harmed by ObamaCare, and Senator Reid said that all of them were ``stories made up from whole cloth.''

Well, here is a horror story from the minority leader's home State newspaper--Nevada--very recently. This was an article from earlier this month, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 7. The headline was ``Past state ObamaCare sign-up glitches now haunt Nevadans at tax time.''

Here is what the article says:

How did a Reno collections agent end up in collections himself?

The answer:

He bought coverage in 2014 through the state's health insurance exchange.

According to the article:

Rick Furst is still ironing out wrinkles in a plan purchased in May through the Nevada Health Link and its contractor, Xerox. His cascade of issues has included bad coverage dates, unpaid medical bills and an incorrect tax-credit form.

This man told the Las Vegas newspaper, ``My credit was excellent, and now my credit is shot.'' His credit was excellent, and now his credit is shot. Does Senator Reid think this man from his home State of Nevada made up his story out of whole cloth?

People are having their lives turned upside down by the disgraceful failure of these ObamaCare exchanges. That is a fact. It is a cruel and costly side effect of this terrible health care law. Paul Krugman of the New York Times did not talk about that fact in his opinion column in the New York Times the other day.

Another thing he and the minority leader are not talking about is the fact that many Americans now have less access to actual care because of the health care law. Well, they should have known about that fact; it was reported right there in the New York Times itself on Sunday, February 8, 2015, with the headline ``Insured, but not covered.'' ``New policies have ..... many Americans scrambling.'' The article talks about the narrow networks many insurance plans had to create. This was to try to meet the requirements of ObamaCare without the premiums going even higher.

The story starts off by talking about one woman in New York City. Her name is Karen Pineman. First, she lost her existing health insurance policy because it did not meet all of the mandates President Obama said a health insurance policy had to include.

The President calls those benefits ``essential benefits.'' I call them excessive benefits. It is much more insurance than many people need, want, or can afford.

The article in the New York Times says that she accepted that she would have to pay a higher premium for a plan with a narrower network of providers and no out-of-network coverage. According to the article, she also accepted the fact that she would have to pay out of her own pocket to see her primary care physician because her doctor was not part of the narrow network that was now covered under her insurance. Well, she even accepted having copays of nearly $1,800 to put a cast on her ankle after she broke it playing tennis. Finally, the article says, her frustration bubbled over when she tried to arrange a followup visit with her orthopedic surgeon. The nearest doctor available in her network who treated ankle problems was in Stamford, CT. Remember, she lives in New York City.

This woman finally had enough. She told the newspaper: It is ridiculous. Didn't they notice that I was in another State?

Well, that woman, as reported in the New York Times, did not make up her story out of whole cloth. Those kinds of narrow networks are a fact under President Obama's law.

It is a fact that there are people who now have coverage and can't have access to care. There is a difference between coverage and care. You do not have to take my world for it; it is right there in the New York Times.

So the minority leader is correct. Republicans have been relentless in condemning the horrifying costs of the President's health care law. Republicans have been relentless in condemning the intolerable damage the health care law has done to people's access to health care.

Republicans will continue to be relentless because this health care law has been bad for patients, it has been bad for providers, and it has been terrible for American taxpayers. Republicans will continue to come to the floor to offer the facts about how the health care law has harmed American families. We will continue to offer solutions that deliver the real reform people have been asking for all along--the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower cost.

I yield the floor.

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