[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 26 (Wednesday, February 12, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S919-S920]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Yesterday President Obama was asked about the 
administration's latest ObamaCare delay. Instead of finally explaining 
to the American people why he believes certain employers would get 
ObamaCare exemptions while the middle class should not, he just doubled 
down again on the same old talking points. It is truly disappointing.
  I wish he would finally agree to work with Republicans on a way to 
replace ObamaCare with bipartisan reforms that could help the middle 
class and those who are hurting the most because this much is now 
perfectly clear: ObamaCare is not working the way the administration 
promised. It is hurting the middle class, it is eliminating incentives 
to work in the middle of a jobs crisis, and it will lower overall 
compensation--things such as salaries, wages, and benefits for the 
American people--with those who earn the least potentially the most 
negatively impacted of all.
  ObamaCare is a law that is not fair, and this is essentially true for 
many of those it purports to help. For all the disruption and pain, it 
is a law that will still leave 31 million Americans uninsured at the 
end of the day. That is why it is not surprising when we hear that 
nearly 90 percent--9 out of 10--of the new enrollees in ObamaCare 
exchange plans are actually folks who were already insured, many of 
them simply shifting from plans they liked to more expensive plans the 
government thinks they should have. This leads so many Americans to 
ask: What was the point? What was the point of ObamaCare?
  For months the folks in my State have watched the administration hand 
out exemption after exemption to its friends and waiver after waiver to 
the politically connected. They are left to think, how is that fair? 
More than one-quarter of a million Kentuckians received notice last 
year that their health insurance plans would be canceled because of 
ObamaCare. Kentuckians lost plans they liked and wanted to keep. Many 
realized that they wouldn't be able to afford new coverage or that new 
plans wouldn't cover the doctors and hospitals they have come to know 
and trust or that massively increased premiums and deductibles would 
radically alter the ways they lived and worked.
  So while I am sure the folks who conceived the law meant well, this 
much seems perfectly clear by now: Trying to run folks' lives from 
hundreds of miles away is not the way to help. It is often the way to 
make things worse.
  Kentuckians are capable of making the decisions that worked best for 
them, for their own medical needs and financial situations. I am sure 
there is some think-tank report that might disagree. I know there is no 
end to well-

[[Page S920]]

paid Washington bureaucrats with ``better ideas,'' but people do not 
want Washington's enlightened judgment ruling over their lies.
  ObamaCare is what you get when you put decisions that belong in the 
hands of the middle class in the hands of the government class. You get 
2,700 pages of law that lead to 20,000 pages of rules and regulations. 
You get a Web site that doesn't work as a symbol of a law that won't 
work. You get a maze of bureaucracies and government contractors with 
indecipherable acronyms--CMS, CCIIO, CGI, QSSI--that seem to exist to 
obscure accountability when things go wrong. You get decisions that are 
based upon the needs of a political calendar rather than what it will 
take to get the job done.
  Worst of all, we hear stories from Kentuckians such as this one from 
a woman who was about to lose her plan and was shopping on the 
exchange. She said:

       I can't afford the options that have been made available to 
     me. I make too much money to qualify for any ``help'' from 
     the ACA but I don't make enough to afford paying double what 
     my premium is now. To get a plan that is ``comparable'' to 
     what I have now, I will have to pay about $12,000 a year 
     in premiums alone.

  You hear stories like the one Rebecca Stuart recently shared with 
President Obama himself. She told the President that she had to change 
health insurance plans even though she liked her old plan--and that she 
was having ``a panicked experience'' trying to get consistent answers 
about whether her 10-year-old son would continue being able to see his 
specialist under ObamaCare.
  This isn't right. I know the President can't be unmoved by these 
stories, so I am calling on President Obama to move to the center. I am 
saying it is time to start over on health care--to replace ObamaCare 
with real bipartisan reforms that can actually help the people who need 
it, because a plan such as ObamaCare that costs this much, that hurts 
this many Americans, and that still fails to achieve its principal goal 
at the end of the day just won't work.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Pennsylvania.

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