[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 5, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6149-S6150]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            REPEAL OBAMACARE

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, in February of last year, we had a 
fairly extraordinary event at the Blair House here in Washington. The 
President invited a large number of Members of Congress--must have been 
20 or 30 of us around the table. He sat there the whole day, and we sat 
around the table and we talked about health care. It was called the 
Health Care Summit.
  A great many Americans watched that live on television, and because 
of the Internet and other explosions of new media, they still watch 
some of the things that were said that day. The reason I know that is 
because people have come up to me often and talked about an exchange I 
had with the President of the United States.
  The issue was about health care premiums in the individual market. 
Citing a Congressional Budget Office letter, I said to the President: 
``Mr. President, respectfully, your new health care law that you 
propose is going to increase individual premiums.''
  He stopped me and said:

       Now Lamar, let's get our facts straight. You are wrong 
     about that.

  He proceeded to explain to me why I was wrong and he was right. With 
all respect, I believe I was right and even just a little year later, 
what the Congressional Budget Office was saying then, which was that 
individual premiums would go up as a result of the health care law, the 
last 17 months have shown that we were exactly right. This last week 
the Kaiser Family Foundation released a survey that showed the average 
family premium for employer-sponsored insurance was $15,000 in 2011, a 
9-percent increase over the previous year. Let me quickly say that 
employer-sponsored insurance is not the same as the individual 
insurance I was talking about with the President a year ago. But it is 
the same subject. Republicans were saying that we opposed the health 
care bill because it would increase premiums, and what we wanted to do 
was to lower the cost of health care for Americans by going step by 
step in that direction rather than expanding an expensive health care 
system that was already too expensive for more Americans, and doing it 
in a way that would increase premiums for many Americans.
  ABC News said the Kaiser Family Foundation report ``underlines that 
many of the promises surrounding President Obama's health care 
legislation remain unfulfilled. Though the White House argues that 
change is coming.''
  Even the New York Times on September 27 said: The steep increase in 
rates is particularly unwelcome at a time when the economy is still 
sputtering. Many businesses cite the high cost of coverage as a factor 
in their decision not to hire. And health insurance has become 
increasingly unaffordable for many Americans.
  I reported on this Senate floor my conversations with the chief 
executive officers of restaurant chains around the country. Together 
they are the second largest employer in the country after the 
government, and they employ a great many young people and low-income 
people, the kind of men and women who are looking for jobs today. What 
they were telling me was that the mandates of the health care law will 
make it more difficult for them to hire people. In one specific 
example, one of the largest of the restaurant chains was saying that he 
operates his store with 90 employees today, and because of the health 
care mandates, he will seek to operate his store with 70 employees a 
day. That is not a way to increase the number of jobs.
  But there are other provisions in the health care law that cause 
premiums to go up, which was the point of my discussion with the 
President in February of 2010.
  The CMS Chief Actuary predicted in 2010, saying that by 2014--still a 
couple of years away, 3 years away--growth in private health insurance 
premiums is expected to accelerate to 9.4 percent, 4.4 percent higher 
than in the absence of health reform.
  The President had said in his discussion with me that under the law 
he proposed, the individual market would cost 40 to 20 percent less. 
That was also in the Congressional Budget Office letter. But those 
reductions were overwhelmed by other costs that were identified in the 
CBO letter that would produce a 27- to 30-percent increase. So the net 
result, according to the predictions in November 2009 by 
the Congressional Budget Office, was there would be an increase in 
individual premiums of 10 to 13 percent.

  These individual market premiums, premiums that individuals buy 
without an employer's help, are not the largest share of insurance 
policies in America, but they affect roughly 12 to 15 million 
Americans. That is a lot of people who are having their insurance costs 
go up.
  Aon Hewitt's recently released 2011 Health Insurance Trend Driver 
Survey reports that for 2011, individual health care plans reported 
estimated 4.7-percent increases directly due to the new health care 
law.
  Then according to the September 8, 2010 Wall Street Journal article:

       Health insurers say they plan to raise premiums for some 
     Americans as a direct result of the health overhaul in coming 
     weeks, complicating Democrats' efforts to trumpet their 
     significant achievement before the mid-term elections. Aetna, 
     some Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and other smaller carriers 
     have asked for premium increases of between 1 and 9 percent 
     to pay for extra benefits required under the law.

  In the same article it says Aetna said that extra benefits forced it 
to seek rate increases for individual plans of 5 to 7 percent in 
California, and 5.5 to 6 to 8 percent in Nevada. That was precisely the 
discussion I was having with the President in February 2010, when I 
said that under the health care law, because of the mandates in the 
law, individual health care premium costs will go up.
  In Wisconsin and North Carolina, according to that same article, 
Celtic Insurance Company says half of the 18-percent increase it is 
seeking comes from complying with health care mandates.
  Then in a September 16 article last year in the Hartford Courant, 
ConnectiCare is seeking an average 22-percent hike for its individual 
market HMO plans. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut say 
in a letter, it expects the Federal health reform law to increase rates 
by as much as 22.9 percent for just a single provision.
  These increases happen for predictable reasons. Because of the 
requirements in the law for minimum credible coverage--in other words, 
if you are required to buy a better kind of health insurance, if you 
are required to buy a Cadillac instead of a Chevrolet, it is going cost 
more. And it does cost more.
  Another factor that will cause insurance premiums to rise is the new 
taxes on insurance, lifesaving medical devices and medicines in the 
health reform law. Someone has to pay for those costs, and the ones who 
are going to pay for them are the people who buy health insurance.
  Then there is the question of what we call cost shift. When we add 25 
million Americans to Medicaid, premiums will increase because the costs 
will shift to private insurers to help pay for those costs. That is 
according to the Chief Actuary of CMS which is in this administration.
  Then, finally, age rating is going to cause insurance premiums to go 
up. What it basically says is that older Americans will not have to pay 
as much, so younger Americans are going to have to pay more. It is no 
surprise that under the new health care law, health insurance premiums 
are going up, becoming an even bigger drag on employment and on family 
budgets. This was predicted by the Congressional Budget Office while we 
were debating the health care law. It was predicted by Republicans who 
offered an alternative to take steps to decrease costs in health care, 
instead of this big, comprehensive law that expanded the system that 
already costs too much.
  It offers even more reasons why we should repeal or make significant 
changes in the health care law if we want to create an environment in 
which we can make it easier and cheaper to grow private sector jobs, 
and in which more Americans can afford a reasonable cost health 
insurance.
  I yield the floor.

[[Page S6150]]

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. CORKER. It is rare that I am down here on the floor with the 
senior Senator from Tennessee, but it is always a pleasure. I certainly 
appreciate his great leadership and especially today. I enjoyed all of 
his comments. But his comments about the China currency bill probably 
should be labeled the China trade war bill, because I think that is 
where it would lead.
  (The remarks of Mr. Corker pertaining to the introduction of S. 1655 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')

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