[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 173 (Tuesday, December 1, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8203-S8204]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, 5 years ago, days after President Obama 
signed the Affordable Care Act into law, the senior Democratic Senator 
from New York went on ``Meet the Press'' to discuss the bill. He told 
the host: ``Well, I think as people learn about the bill, and now that 
the bill is enacted, it's going to become more and more popular.'' I 
don't need to tell anyone that never happened.
  Five years after ObamaCare was enacted, a majority of Americans 
disapproved the law, and that is a pattern we have seen since the law's 
passage. Why has the law failed to earn the support Democrats 
predicted? For one simple reason: The law is just not working as 
President Obama promised it would. The Affordable Care Act was supposed 
to lower health care premiums. It didn't. It was supposed to reduce 
health care costs. It didn't. It was supposed to protect the health 
care plans that Americans wanted to keep. It didn't. The law was sold 
as a health care solution, but it turned out to be yet another health 
care problem.
  Five years after the law's passage, here is where we are: Americans 
with job-based insurance are paying more for their health care, with 
the average employee seeing a $400 increase in his or her deductible 
since 2010. Small business employees have fared even worse, with 
average deductibles now close to $2,000. And Americans are paying more 
for their premiums as well. An average annual premium contribution for 
family coverage is currently $12,591, up from $9,773 in 2010. That is 
nearly $3,000 in additional premium costs or another $250 a month. For 
many families, that comes on top of an increase in their deductible. 
Meanwhile, thousands of part-time workers have lost their job-based 
insurance thanks to ObamaCare mandates that encouraged several large 
employers to stop offering health benefits to part-time employees.
  The situation with the exchanges is no better. Exchange premiums will 
rise once again this year, with many Americans facing rate increases in 
the double digits.
  Over the past few months, I have heard from numerous constituents 
wondering how they will be able to afford the massive premium increases 
they are facing. One constituent in Wessington, SD, wrote to tell me 
that her and her husband's health care plan is going from $17,194 this 
year to a staggering $25,370 next year. That is an annual increase of 
more than $8,000. What family can afford an $8,000 increase in expenses 
from one year to the next?
  Another constituent of mine wrote to tell me this:

       We just received our rate increase for our family health 
     insurance. We have been paying $1,283 a month and the $557.45 
     increase will bring it up to $1,841.26. This amount has gone 
     from 26 percent to 37 percent of our income. It is over twice 
     of our house payment. . . . After having insurance coverage 
     for the past 38 years, we are faced with dropping coverage, 
     which is ironic since that is not the purpose of the 
     Affordable Care Act. We are considering dropping insurance 
     and facing the penalty just so we can continue to live in our 
     house, pay our bills, and buy groceries.

  That is from a constituent of mine in South Dakota.
  I have received far too many letters like these from individuals who 
are facing enormous premium increases.
  Another constituent wrote to me and said they are facing a 69-percent 
premium increase--69 percent. She and her husband are facing a $22,884 
insurance bill. She could buy a brand-new car for less than that.
  So it is no surprise that a recent survey from the Robert Wood 
Johnson Foundation found that nearly 80 percent of uninsured Americans 
who have looked for insurance report that they cannot find or cannot 
afford to buy health insurance. The grim reality for millions of 
Americans is that the Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable.
  Unfortunately, higher health care costs are just one of the problems 
with this law. ObamaCare has already reduced Americans' health care 
choices. Faced with expensive ObamaCare mandates, insurance companies 
have chosen one of the few methods left to them to control costs, and 
that is restricting consumers' choice of doctors and hospitals. 
Americans were promised they could keep the doctor they liked, but for 
many Americans, that is not true.

[[Page S8204]]

  Then there are the taxes imposed by the law. Because the 
administration did its best to hide the true cost of ObamaCare, many 
Americans don't realize that the law hiked taxes by $1 trillion. In 
fact, the law imposed almost a dozen new taxes, including an annual tax 
on health insurance that is passed on to consumers in the form of 
higher premiums, a tax increase on flexible spending accounts and 
health savings accounts, and a tax on wages and self-employment income. 
President Obama promised not to raise taxes on those making less than 
$250,000, but, as we all know, he broke that promise many times over 
when ObamaCare was signed into law. Many of these taxes directly impact 
low- and middle-income families.
  Additionally, the law's tax on the makers of lifesaving medical 
devices, such as pacemakers and insulin pumps, which went into effect 
in 2013, has already eliminated jobs in the medical device industry and 
driven up the price of essential medical equipment.
  The medical device industry is not the only industry in which 
ObamaCare is costing jobs. ObamaCare's requirement that employers 
provide their workers with government-approved insurance or pay a tax 
has made employing full-time workers more costly, which has discouraged 
employers from hiring. Workers in the retail and restaurant industries, 
many of them younger, less skilled workers, have been hit particularly 
hard. In all, the Congressional Budget Office has predicted that 
ObamaCare will result in the equivalent of 2 million fewer full-time 
jobs in 2017 and 2.5 million fewer full-time jobs by 2024. That is not 
good news for our already sluggish economy.
  All Americans remember the President's claim that under ObamaCare, 
``If you like your plan, you can keep it''--a claim that was named, 
interestingly enough, PolitiFact's ``Lie of the Year'' in 2013 after 
ObamaCare eliminated the health care plans of 4 million Americans. Now 
hundreds of thousands of Americans will be losing their ObamaCare 
health care plan after a number of the health insurance co-ops 
established under the law proved unsustainable. In all, 12 of the 23 
health care co-ops established by the President's health care law have 
collapsed, resulting in the loss of billions in taxpayer dollars, in 
addition to the loss of Americans' health plans. Taxpayers have also 
lost more than $1 billion spent on failed or failing State exchanges, 
such as the failed exchanges in the States of Oregon, Hawaii, Vermont, 
Maryland, and Massachusetts.
  Four years after telling ``Meet the Press'' that ObamaCare would 
become ``more and more popular,'' the senior Senator from New York 
admitted that the Democrats had made a strategic error by focusing on 
ObamaCare. Americans, he admitted, were ``crying out for an end to the 
recession, for better wages and more jobs; not for changes in their 
health care.'' The senior Senator from New York is right.
  Americans didn't want ObamaCare then, and they certainly don't want 
it now. ObamaCare is broken, and Americans know it. It is time to 
repeal this law and start moving toward the kind of health care reform 
Americans are actually looking for: an affordable, accountable, 
patient-focused system that gives individuals control of their health 
care decisions.
  This week the Senate will take up a repeal bill that will begin the 
process of lifting the burdens ObamaCare has placed on Americans. I 
look forward to debating the bill and working with my colleagues to 
begin building a bridge to a better health care system for hard-working 
families across the country. It is time to give the American people the 
real health care reform they deserve.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.

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