[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 152 (Tuesday, October 29, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7605-S7608]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               ObamaCare

  Mr. BARRASSO. Later this week we will hit the 1-month anniversary of 
the launch of President Obama's health insurance exchanges. My question 
is, what have we learned the past 4 weeks? We know the rollout of the 
exchanges and the healthcare.gov Web site, Americans would agree, has 
been disastrous.
  Last week the Associated Press ran a headline about what people in my 
home State of Wyoming had experienced. It said: ``National health 
insurance site sputters in Wyoming.''
  The article goes on to talk about the health care law, the Web site, 
and says: ``Wyoming Insurance Commissioner Tom Hirsig said Monday that 
he's personally been unable to register on the Federal Government's 
Wyoming site despite trying every day.''
  The insurance commissioner from the State of Wyoming has been unable 
to register on the Federal Government's Wyoming site despite trying 
every day starting October 1. This is the same story we have seen all 
across the country.
  We have also learned over the past 4 weeks that the President's 
health care law is much more than just a failed Web site. What we know 
is that there is sticker shock hitting people all across the country as 
they start shopping and find that higher premiums are what they are 
facing. They are going to be paying much higher premiums if they are 
able to buy health insurance, if they are able to get through the 
exchange.
  CBS News had the story of one woman in Florida whose health insurance 
will cost 11 times what she is currently paying--from $54 a month to 
$591 a month.
  Over the past 4 weeks, another thing we have learned is that many 
people have received notices in the mail--cancellation notices--from 
their insurance companies. They are being told that the insurance 
policies, the coverage they have had, is being cancelled. Only a small 
number of people have been able to get insurance through the government 
exchanges so far. We have seen that over the last month.
  In testimony today in the House hearing, a person from the 
administration said they cannot tell us how many people have been 
unable to get insurance through the exchanges, but we know that 
hundreds of thousands of people are losing the insurance they had.
  Here is what one woman told CBS: ``What I have right now is what I'm 
happy with, and I just want to know why I can't keep what I have. Why 
do I have to be forced into something else?''
  Like many Americans, this is a person who actually believed President 
Obama when he promised that if people liked the insurance they had, 
they could keep it. Now she learned under the President's health care 
law, it is not only a Web site, it is a broken promise. It turns out if 
the White

[[Page S7606]]

House likes your plan, then you can keep it. If the White House doesn't 
like your plan, then you are out of luck, you can't keep it.
  Yesterday the Obama administration finally admitted that millions of 
people across the country will lose their insurance. We know all of 
these ways that the President's health care law is more than a failed 
Web site, so the big question now is what don't we know yet? What is 
there that the American people don't know about the health care law? 
How much worse are things going to get before the White House admits 
the entire law is broken?
  We have seen one headline after another about problems with the 
health care law that the Obama administration knew about and would not 
admit. There has been one revelation after another about troubles they 
hid from the American people and did so deliberately. What else is this 
administration not telling the American people?
  The White House may have finally said publicly that millions of 
people are going to lose the insurance they have but, according to NBC 
News, the Obama administration has known that for at least 3 years.
  When the train first went off the tracks, the White House said its 
Web site crashed because they said millions of people tried to use the 
Web site at the same time. According to the Washington Post, the 
limited testing the administration did before the launch found the site 
would crash if only a few hundred people used it.
  It is fascinating. The Democrats' whole law was based on the idea 
that Washington, government, is capable of running America's health 
care system competently. What we have seen is gross incompetence. It 
turns out that Washington can't even set up a Web site competently, and 
it looks as if they knew it.
  Computer programmers warned about the rush to get the Web site done 
by October 1. Instead of hitting the pause button, which they should 
have done, hitting the pause button until it could get things working, 
the White House pushed on. This is what we learned from some of the 
contractors who built the Web site. This Web site cost the taxpayers 
over $400 million so far and the bills are still coming in.
  These contractors testified last week in the House that full tests of 
the site should have started months in advance, but testing didn't 
happen until the last 2 weeks of September. Who decided to go ahead 
anyway? President Obama's administration. They are the ones who 
decided.
  Contractors thought if the registration process wasn't going to work, 
then maybe it would help to set up a way for people to shop for plans 
and get information without registering. The administration told them 
to ``deprioritize'' that plan. What a government word, ``deprioritize'' 
that plan.
  Then when the Web site turned out to be a complete disaster, a 
systems failure, the Obama administration tried to hide how bad it was. 
It asked the largest health insurer in North Dakota not to tell anybody 
how many people have signed up for insurance through the exchange--the 
administration telling the State: Don't open up, don't tell people the 
truth. Why not? Because as of last week only 14 people had been able to 
sign up for the companies' plans. The numbers are so embarrassing for 
the administration they have been trying to cover up. They continued to 
cover up today when there was testimony and no numbers were given. It 
is the same reason the administration won't say how many people have 
signed up nationwide. They know how many people have signed up, but 
they refuse to tell the American people, the taxpayers, the people who 
pay the taxes and see their money being wasted by this administration 
and this government. There are new problems with this health care law 
every day.
  The Web site was supposed to be the easy part, but to me it is the 
tip of the iceberg. The Web site failures are just the tip of the 
iceberg.
  What else does the White House know about? By now they should know 
about cancelled coverage because it looks as if millions of Americans 
have already received notices from their insurance companies that they 
have lost their insurance, their insurance has been cancelled.
  There have been premium increases. People have talked about the fact 
that their premiums are going up, and there are higher copays and 
deductibles to deal with. People are losing access to the doctor. Plus 
there are always the issues of fraud and identity theft.
  What else are we going to learn this week when Secretary Sebelius 
testifies in the House tomorrow? Will she actually open up? Will she 
give them the truth? Will she give them the real numbers, or will she 
not admit to what is actually going on and refuse to answer the 
questions?
  How much worse does the Obama administration's incompetence get? What 
will it take for the President to admit that his health care law has 
been a train wreck and they will have to delay it for at least a 
year? We know he is going to have to do it eventually. There is no way 
all of these problems are going to get fixed quickly, and he is going 
to have to delay the individual mandate--the mandate that says every 
American must buy or have and prove they have health insurance. And who 
is the enforcer? The IRS--the Internal Revenue Service. The President 
should just go ahead and do it now and also delay all the other parts 
of the law, not just the mandate.

  It is time for President Obama to really come clean with the American 
people about what his administration knew and then come to the table to 
work with Republicans and give people the real health care reform that 
they need, want, and deserve so people can get the care they want from 
a doctor they choose at a lower cost.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of my colleague 
from Wyoming.
  Here in Washington and, indeed, throughout the country everyone is 
talking about the ObamaCare Web site. No doubt that is a serious 
concern. The healthcare.gov Web site has been, to put it bluntly, a 
debacle. I don't know of a single Member of Congress, Democrat or 
Republican, who would say otherwise.
  That said, we need to be clear about something: The problems with 
ObamaCare go much deeper than a faulty Web site. Sure, the 
administration would have the American people believe that the problems 
with this law are simply technical in nature and that once they bring 
in technical experts to fix the Web site, all will be right with the 
world. But let's not kid ourselves. The problems with ObamaCare are 
fundamental and systemic. The administration may very well get the Web 
site up and running in the next few weeks, and they should, but that 
won't fix the health care law. I would like to take a few minutes today 
to talk about some of the problems facing ObamaCare that have nothing 
to do with the Web site.
  When he was trying to get the law passed, President Obama repeatedly 
promised Americans that ``if you like your current health plan, you 
will be able to keep it.'' This promise was central to the President's 
efforts to sell ObamaCare to the American people, and as it turns out, 
it was all a lie. Now even the White House admits that millions of 
Americans will not be able to keep their health plan under the law, and 
if recent news reports are to be believed, they have known this for 
years. Experts have predicted that as many as 16 million Americans may 
lose their existing coverage due to ObamaCare's new requirements. 
According to the NBC News story from yesterday, the Obama 
administration has known about this for at least 3 years. We have known 
about it as well.
  Consumers throughout the country are already receiving cancellation 
letters from their insurance providers. For example, in New Jersey 
800,000 individuals are being dropped from their existing plans. Kaiser 
Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people informing 
them their current coverage will end. Florida Blue is ending policies 
of 300,000 customers due to ObamaCare. This isn't some unforeseen or 
unintended consequence of the law. On the contrary, it is precisely 
what was intended when the law was put into place.
  As you know, Mr. President, the President's health care law includes 
a mountain of new mandates and requirements for health insurance plans. 
Any plans that fail to meet those onerous requirements are invalidated 
under the law. True enough, the law provides that plans that were in 
effect as of

[[Page S7607]]

March 2010 will be grandfathered in, allowing consumers who prefer to 
keep those policies to do so even if the plan's don't meet the law's 
requirements. However, the Department of Health and Human Services has, 
through regulations, all but eliminated the protections enjoyed by 
those in existing plans by saying that the grandfathering provision 
does not apply to plans that have undergone any changes--even small 
changes to deductibles or copayments--since 2010. Under this 
requirement, many of the plans that were in place before passage of 
ObamaCare, particularly those in the individual health insurance 
market, will fail to pass muster. That is why we are seeing hundreds of 
thousands of Americans being dropped from their current insurance plans 
and why the same fate is certain to befall millions more.
  As I said, the Obama administration knew about these problems a long 
time ago. In fact, regulations issued in July of 2010 estimated that 
because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, 40 to 67 
percent of consumers would not be able to keep their policies. Let me 
repeat that. The administration knew in July 2010 that at least 40 to 
67 percent of consumers in the individual market would not be able to 
keep their plans in place. Yet the President never took back his 
promise: ``If you like your current health plan, you will be able to 
keep it.'' This, quite frankly, is preposterous.
  The response we are getting from the administration is that, sure, 
many people will lose their existing health insurance, but it will be 
replaced by better, cheaper options. This claim is at odds with the 
facts. For many people, health expenses will increase under the new 
plan as a result of higher premiums, higher deductibles, and higher 
copays. One study from the Manhattan Institute found that individual 
market premiums will increase 99 percent for men and 62 percent for 
women nationwide. For others, the new plans may not cover visits to 
their current doctor or the hospital they have used in the past. That 
is because insurers are reducing the number of doctors and hospitals 
covered by plans in the exchanges in order to reduce premium prices. 
These changes are a direct result of ObamaCare's new requirements and 
mandates.
  I have received letters from my constituents from all over Utah who 
are scared, who are angry, and who are confused about the changes they 
are facing. For example, Brenton in Provo, UT, currently has a high-
deductible plan and uses a health savings account. This arrangement 
works well for Brenton and his family, and they would like to keep it. 
Unfortunately, Brenton's plan has been canceled due to ObamaCare. The 
plan he will be required to purchase is more expensive and includes 
coverage he doesn't want. There is also Kathy from Salt Lake City, who 
wrote to tell me her deductible will increase from $3,000 to $5,000, 
her copays for doctor visits will increase by 30 percent, and her 
copays for prescription drugs will increase to 50 percent. Kathy let me 
know that as a result of these changes, her health care expenses will 
now be higher than her income.
  Even those who were in favor of the law are now finding it is not 
being implemented as they expected. A recent L.A. Times article 
profiled a young woman who was shocked by the 50-percent rate hike she 
received as a result of the health care law. She was quoted as saying, 
``I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it.'' That 
is a refrain I think we will be hearing from a number of people who 
supported ``health care reform.''

  Increased costs aren't the only problem consumers will be facing 
under ObamaCare. There are other serious, more subtle problems that 
have yet to be addressed. For example, some consumers may have their 
personal information compromised by an ObamaCare navigator or by 
submitting an application to the federally facilitated marketplace, the 
Federal data services hub, or one of the Affordable Care Act call 
centers. I have warned about that for a number of months--that they are 
moving too fast and not doing the job well enough--and a lot of people 
are going to get hurt.
  Social Security numbers, employment information, birth dates, health 
records, and tax returns are among the personal data that will be 
transmitted to this data hub, resulting in an unprecedented amount of 
information collected in one place by a government entity. Every piece 
of information someone would need to steal an individual's identity or 
access their confidential credit information will be available at the 
fingertips of a skilled hacker, providing a gold mine for data thieves 
and a staggering security threat to consumers. The entire system, 
including the data hub--a new information-sharing network that allows 
State and Federal agencies to verify this information--has not gone 
under any independent review to determine whether the data that is 
entered is secure. This means an individual's personal and financial 
records may be at serious risk of becoming available to data thieves.
  I have already been to the floor several times to discuss these 
issues. I am here again today because as of yet there has been no 
solution--or should I say no solutions--to these problems. In fact, the 
ObamaCare exchanges are less than a month old and data breaches are 
already occurring at the State level. A recent CBS News story featured 
a Minnesota insurance broker who was looking for information about 
assisting with ObamaCare implementation. Instead, what landed in his 
in-box last month was a document filled with the names, Social Security 
numbers, and other pieces of personal information belonging to his 
fellow Minnesotans. In one of the first breaches of the new ObamaCare 
online marketplaces, an employee of the Minnesota marketplace, called 
MNsure, accidentally emailed him a document containing personally 
identifying information for more than 2,400 insurance agents. While the 
incident was resolved, the broker said it raised serious questions for 
him as to whether those who sign up for MNsure can be confident their 
data is safe. These types of incidents are only going to increase as 
time goes on if rigorous testing is not performed to ensure that the 
data hub is sufficiently secure.
  Despite assurances by the chief technology officer for the 
administration in early September that ``we have completed security 
testing and received certification to operate,'' we all now know that 
all the testing had not been completed until just days before the 
October 1 launch date and that no third party--no third-party expert--
had a chance to review it.
  But there is much we don't know. What kind of testing was done? Who 
did the testing? What did they look for? What were the results? And 
perhaps most importantly, what are the risks of using the Web site? To 
help get answers to these questions, today several of my colleagues on 
the Senate Finance Committee and I are sending a letter to Secretary 
Sebelius asking detailed questions about the testing protocols, what 
waivers were received with respect to the testing requirements, and any 
and all results of the limited testing that did occur. Hopefully, that 
will enable Congress and the American people to better understand 
exactly what is broken with the system and help to ensure it does not 
happen again.
  These questions and problems demonstrate why it is imperative that 
the Government Accountability Office--GAO--independently verify that 
sufficient privacy and security controls are in place for the data hub 
and the entire Federal marketplace so that Congress has independent 
assurance that the necessary controls exist and that taxpayers know 
their personal information is secure. That is why I introduced S. 1525, 
the Trust But Verify Act, which calls on the GAO to conduct such a 
review and delays implementation of the exchanges until the review is 
completed. The bill currently has 32 Senate cosponsors.
  As you can see, Mr. President, the problems with ObamaCare are 
numerous and fundamental. As I said before, this law was bad policy 
when we debated it, it was bad policy when the Democrats forced it 
through the Congress, and it remains bad policy today.
  I have little doubt the administration can eventually get the Web 
site up and running. They would have us believe that once that task is 
accomplished, everything will be fine. But that is simply not the case. 
They can't

[[Page S7608]]

say everything will be fine when millions of Americans are losing their 
existing health coverage as a direct result of the health care law. 
They can't say everything will be fine when health care costs are 
continuing to skyrocket even though the President claimed his health 
law would bring costs down. And they can't say everything will be fine 
when consumers' personal information is at serious risk because the 
administration didn't take the proper precautions with its new data 
system.
  As I said, the healthcare.gov Web site has been a debacle and the 
President is right to recognize it as such, but it would be a huge 
mistake to simply write off the problems with ObamaCare as a simple IT 
problem.
  My own position on ObamaCare is very clear. I support repealing the 
law in its entirety. As more and more Americans lose their health 
coverage--coverage they shopped for and liked--and face outlandish 
costs as a result of the law, I believe that position will eventually 
be vindicated. In the meantime, I think we can all agree that the law 
is simply not ready for prime time and that at the very least it should 
be delayed so we can protect the American people from further harm.
  I have made this call before and I am sure I will make it again. 
Today, with all the new information we have received--the broken Web 
site, the security problems, the skyrocketing costs, and the millions 
of Americans losing existing coverage--I hope my friends on the other 
side of the aisle will begin to see the light. I hope they will finally 
see what happens when one party tries to take on something as vast and 
as complicated as our health care system all on its own without any 
help from the other side.
  I hope that they would work with us to come up with real solutions to 
our Nation's health care problems. I will keep waiting, and if the 
problems we have seen in the last few weeks are any indication, I 
should not have to wait too much longer.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). Under the previous order, all 
postcloture time is yielded back.
  The question occurs on the nomination.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  At the moment there is not.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I suggest the absence of quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.