[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 173 (Tuesday, December 1, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Page S8201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this week the Republican-led Senate will 
keep a promise we made to the American people. If they entrusted us 
with the leadership and the majority in the last election, we told them 
we would vote to repeal ObamaCare--the largest Federal overreach in 
recent history. It has been disastrous to thousands, if not millions, 
of people.
  Unfortunately, the President's ill-advised health care law and the 
partisan push that made it law came with a lot of burdensome 
regulations. Both the law and those regulations have hobbled the 
American economy because they simply added additional burdens onto the 
small businesses that we depend upon to create the jobs so people can 
find work and provide for their families. It has hobbled those small 
businesses by burdening them with unmanageable costs, and it has failed 
the American people at every turn.
  When the President said ``If you like what you have you can keep 
it,'' that was not true. Millions of Americans lost their preferred 
health insurance providers and the doctors who accepted that coverage. 
Instead of providing people with more affordable access to health care, 
millions of people faced higher premiums and higher deductibles. For 
all practical matters, the higher deductibles that come along with most 
ObamaCare health care policies make millions of Americans effectively 
self-insured.
  More than 5 years after it became law, it is no surprise that a 
recent poll found that only 37 percent of the respondents approved of 
ObamaCare. ObamaCare is a textbook example of how bigger government 
does not necessarily lead to more choices or real solutions. Indeed, 
what it demonstrates is that it can lead to higher costs, inefficient 
health care delivery, and millions of Americans being let down by a 
system that was a partisan vote here in the Senate.
  I remember being here on Christmas Eve in 2009 at 7 o'clock in the 
morning when Senate Democrats pushed through the ObamaCare legislation 
in the Senate. Again, without any sort of bipartisan commitment to 
actually improve health care choices and make health care more 
affordable for the American people, it was purely a partisan 
undertaking.
  This bill that we are voting on to repeal ObamaCare will not only 
provide relief and more choices and the opportunity for the market to 
give people the health care they want at a price they can afford, but 
it also represents keeping a promise we made to the American people 
that we would deliver on if they gave us the majority. We will do that 
this week.

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