[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 151 (Monday, October 28, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7577-S7579]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Mr. ALEXANDER:
S. 1590. A bill to amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act to require transparency in the operation of American Health Benefit
Exchanges; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
OBAMACARE EXCHANGE
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, before the Internet, RCA knew how many
records Elvis sold every day. Before the Internet, Ford knew how many
cars they were selling every day. Before the Internet, McDonald's could
tell you how many hamburgers it was selling every day. Yet the Obama
administration cannot tell us how many Americans have tried to sign up
for ObamaCare. They can't tell us how many Americans did sign up for
ObamaCare. They can't tell us what level of insurance they bought, nor
can they tell us in what zip code they live.
They told us that 20 million Americans have visited the ObamaCare Web
site. They have the basic information to shop, but how many have tried
to sign up? How many did sign up? Where do they live? What kind of
insurance did they buy? Not only have they not told us, they have done
their best to keep us from finding out.
With WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden spilling our beans every day, what
is happening on the ObamaCare exchanges is the biggest secret left in
Washington, DC. The National Security Agency could learn lessons from
Secretary Sebelius. We should not have to rely on anonymous sources to
get basic information about what is happening with ObamaCare.
Therefore, I am introducing legislation today to require the
administration answer the following questions every week: How many
people tried to sign up? How many people did sign up? What level of
insurance did they buy? In what ZIP code do they live? What are they
doing to fix the problems? This is not complicated information.
In the Internet age, the administration ought to be able to provide
this information not every week but every day. In fact, they should be
able to provide it every minute. We should not have to pass a law to
find these things out. I hope that every Senator will support this
simple request that this legislation makes. It is a six-page bill. I
will put it in the Congressional Record today, and everyone will have a
chance to read it tomorrow. After everyone has had a chance to read it,
I intend to ask unanimous consent to pass it.
This Congress--both sides of the aisle--is dedicated to transparency.
This administration has described itself as the most transparent
administration in American history. So why should we not unanimously
pass legislation to ask for the most basic information about what is
happening on the ObamaCare exchanges?
Health insurance companies say that in order to guarantee that
everyone has a chance to sign up for insurance before January 1, which
is when the law says they must, the application has to be in by
December 15. That is not very far away.
The administration has been talking about giving a grace period of a
few weeks before the IRS will fine them for not having bought
insurance, as
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ObamaCare says most Americans must buy health insurance. Still, if the
Web site is not fixed, millions of Americans will be required to sign
up for health insurance on a Web site that does not work. As a
consequence of not being able to sign up for health care, they will be
fined by the Internal Revenue Service.
There is a much bigger problem than the fine, and that is millions of
Americans may be without any health insurance at all after January 1
because their insurance is being canceled because of ObamaCare.
Remember when President Obama said: If you like your insurance, you can
keep it? Well, like a lot of things that have been said about
ObamaCare, that is turning out not to be the case.
Our staff has counted the announcements by health insurance companies
that are ceasing to offer policies on January 1 because they don't
qualify under the ObamaCare law. For example, in Tennessee, the State
provides 16,000 Tennesseans who have trouble getting insurance with a
plan called CoverTN. Because it doesn't meet the exact requirements of
ObamaCare, the State is having to cancel that insurance on January 1,
and those 16,000 Tennesseans won't have health insurance.
Other Americans--for example, Tennesseans I have talked to--have what
we call catastrophic insurance. They have insurance that provides for a
catastrophe. That kind of insurance is often not available under
ObamaCare. It is not allowed by ObamaCare for most people. An insurance
company that offers these policies will not be offering them after
January 1, and as a result, millions of Americans will not be able to
buy the insurance they now have.
If individuals can't or won't sign up, that will mean that after
January 1, many of the sickest people will go into the exchanges. The
result will be that the price of insurance--for everyone who has
insurance--will go through the roof. We are already seeing that in the
insurance markets today.
The bottom line: If the Web site is not fixed, millions of Americans
will not only be fined by the IRS for not buying insurance on a Web
site that doesn't work, more importantly, they will be without health
care insurance on January 1, insurance that many of them have today.
The President has said over the last few days that the Web site will
be ready by November 30. You are supposed to have your application in
by December 15 and have the insurance bought by January 1, which only
gives 2 weeks for millions of Americans to make their way through this
maze. We tried to obtain this simple information that I have asked for,
yet repeatedly, the requests which I have directed to Secretary
Sebelius have come back with no answer at all--no answers, nothing.
Outside analysts tell us that only \1/2\ of 1 percent of the people
who logged on to the ObamaCare Web site in the first week were able to
enroll, but we really don't know.
Two weeks ago I sent a letter with House Oversight Chairman Darrell
Issa to Secretary Sebelius, asking for the information she and the
President are not giving us Such as how many people have enrolled
successfully in the exchanges, what the technical problems are, how
much it already costs, and how much it will cost to address these
problems. The deadline for a response to our request has passed.
Chairman Issa has said--and I joined him in the letter--that he may
consider a subpoena to get that information. The American people
deserve an answer to these questions.
Often when the debate comes up, someone will say, Well, the
Republicans don't have any proposals of their own. I have often made
those proposals. I remember on this floor of the Senate many times
proposing steps we should take to change our health care system so more
people could afford insurance. We went back and counted the number of
times when, during the health care debate, various Republicans talked
about our step-by-step proposals for what we should do about health
care, and there were 173 mentions of our step-by-step proposals.
The basic problem with what happened with the new health care law was
that we--the Democratic Congress did, I didn't; I didn't vote for it--
expanded a health care delivery system that already costs too much.
That was the wrong thing to do. That was an historic mistake. What we
should have done is to make changes, step by step, in the health care
delivery system that would reduce the cost of health care for the
largest number of Americans so more people could have afforded it.
Those were the steps we should have taken. We can still do that. Our
health care delivery system is nearly 20 percent of our economy.
ObamaCare is not our health care delivery system. Rather, ObamaCare
includes some additions to our health care delivery system. ObamaCare
is an expansion of a health care delivery system that already costs too
much. The law is making some changes such as the ones I described
earlier in my remarks. Those changes have been described as a train
wreck, but we can turn the train around and head it in another
direction--a direction of more competition, more choices, and lower
costs for Americans buying health insurance.
How can we do that? That is a subject for a long discussion, but here
are a few of the ideas: Make Medicare solvent. The trustees have said
that in 10 years there won't be enough money to pay hospital bills. We
have a duty to make Medicare solvent.
Reform Medicare Advantage to increase more choices and put it on a
more level playing field with Traditional Medicare. That will provide
seniors more options and it should save some money.
Make Medicaid more flexible. I was Governor. I said on the floor that
every Senator who voted for ObamaCare ought to be sentenced to go home
and serve as Governor and try to implement the law. During my time as
Governor, Medicaid was 8 percent of the State budget. I see it has
grown to 26 percent today in Tennessee, soaking up money that otherwise
would go for higher education or for other needed parts of State
government.
We should encourage workplace wellness. We had a lot of debate about
that during the ObamaCare debate and we have ended up with a regulation
that is too restrictive. We can change that.
We can allow small businesses to pool their resources and offer a
larger number of plans to a larger number of Americans at prices they
can afford. We can allow Americans to purchase insurance across State
lines. That would reduce the cost of health care, which should be our
major goal.
We could expand health care savings accounts.
There is bipartisan legislation before the Senate that would define
full-time employment for purposes of the health care law--this one or
any one in the future--as 40 hours instead of 30 hours. That would be a
great help to American business and an even bigger help to the
employees who are being forced to go from 40 hours to 30 hours--
employees who most need that income, and who, by going to 30 hours,
will have to go to a second part-time job, and in many cases, in doing
so, lose whatever health care benefits that might be available to them.
I don't know where the 30 hours came from. That sounds as though it was
made in France. A made-in-America part-time job ought to be up to 40
hours.
Those are just a few of the steps we could take to turn the train
around and avoid the wreck and move us in the right direction. We will
be making those arguments over time. But for now, we need information
about what is happening on the ObamaCare exchanges.
I intend to ask unanimous consent tomorrow to pass a simple, six-page
bill. It is legislation which requires the administration to give us
weekly reports about how many have tried to enroll, how many have
succeeded, what ZIP Code they live in, and what level of insurance they
have purchased. Congress needs to know that, if millions of Americans
are going to lose insurance on January 1, before they have a way to buy
it through a Web site that doesn't work. States need to know it
because, as time goes on, these decisions are going to have an effect
on the Medicaid Programs that States are a partner in and are
operating. Americans need to know it because, in many cases--we have
counted at least 1.5 million cases and we expect millions more policies
that were available to Americans when the law passed will not be
available after January 1. So these
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Americans--and this includes people working in the Congress and people
who are in the Congress--these Americans are going to have to make
decisions before January 1 about what insurance they will have, because
the insurance they now have isn't going to be available under the new
health care law.
This is a six-page bill, and a pretty simple idea. If RCA knew how
many records Elvis was selling every day, if Ford knew before the
Internet age how many cars Ford was selling every day, if McDonald's
before the Internet age knew how many hamburgers it was selling every
day, surely the Obama administration can tell us every week how many
are enrolling on ObamaCare's Web site, how many are successfully
getting their insurance, where they live, and what kind of insurance
they buy. The stakes are much higher than Elvis's records, than Ford's
cars, and than McDonald's hamburgers. These are the stakes of health
insurance that involve the lives of millions of Americans, and I hope
my colleagues will join me tomorrow when I ask unanimous consent to
approve legislation that will require these weekly reports.
______