[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

[[Page S7578]]

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

[[Page S7579]]

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.
                                 ______