[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 135 (Thursday, September 8, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5422-S5423]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, President Obama said something 
interesting just days before signing his namesake health takeover into 
law. In explaining the need for ObamaCare, here is what he said:

       [W]hat's happening to your premiums? What's happening to 
     your co-payments? What's happening to your deductible? 
     They're all going up. That's money straight out of your 
     pocket.
       So, the bottom line is this: The status quo on health care 
     is simply unsustainable.

  ``Simply unsustainable'' was the President's view on the state of our 
health care system before ObamaCare. Here is his view on the health 
care system 6 years later: ``Too many Americans still strain to pay for 
their physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles, or 
pay their monthly insurance bills; struggle to navigate a complex, 
sometimes bewildering system; and remain uninsured.''
  That is the President on the state of America's health care law 6 
years after ObamaCare. The President wrote this just last month. It 
sounds an awful lot like what we heard from him years ago, in the pre-
ObamaCare world. It throws the reality of this partisan law into stark 
relief. It is not only that ObamaCare is failing to live up to the many 
promises invoked to sell it, but it is often making things worse.
  Just pick up any paper or turn on the news, and you will see that 
more troubling projections are rolling in when it comes to ObamaCare. 
In fact, each day seems to bring more forecasts of skyrocketing 
premiums and dwindling choices. It is a trend hitting Americans across 
the country.
  For instance, here is the headline people in my home State recently 
awoke to: ``Get ready to pay more for health insurance in Kentucky.'' 
The story goes on to warn of ObamaCare premium rates that could 
skyrocket by as high as 47 percent. Nearly 160,000 people are expected 
to be impacted.
  Here is a letter from a man from Louisville who recently contacted my 
office. ``How,'' he asks, ``are working class Americans, like myself, 
able to budget for such drastic changes?'' ``The so-called Affordable 
Care Act,'' he said, ``is unaffordable.''
  He and other Kentuckians are hardly alone in feeling this way. Take 
Illinois, where premiums could soar by as much as 55 percent; or 
Tennessee and Montana, where some rates could skyrocket by more than 60 
percent; or Minnesota, where premiums could rise by an average of more 
than 50 percent. Minnesota's Democratic Governor said he was 
``alarmed'' by these ``drastic increases'' and called them ``reason for 
very serious concerns.''
  Even my friend, the Democratic leader, referred to ObamaCare's 
premium increases yesterday as ``huge.'' He is right. He was right to 
mention ObamaCare's ``tax increases'' too. This partisan law raised 
taxes that hit the middle class after Democrats promised that it 
wouldn't.
  So these huge premium increases aren't the only reason ObamaCare is 
raising costs for the middle class. Premiums aren't the only reason 
that Americans recently cited health costs as their No. 1 financial 
concern. It isn't hard to see why Americans might be hurting. Taxes are 
up, copays are up, and deductibles are outpacing wages. Now, with more 
and more insurance companies pulling out of the ObamaCare State 
exchanges, Americans are being left with another big problem--fewer 
coverage options.
  The Obama administration used to promise us that the ObamaCare 
marketplace would ``provide more choice and control over health 
insurance options'' and result in ``a significant increase in 
competition and an array of options for consumers everywhere.'' That 
was the promise of ObamaCare.
  But that is not the reality for many Americans today. ObamaCare has 
forced out so many insurers that about one in five ObamaCare customers 
will be forced to find a new insurance company this fall. More than 
half of the country could have two or fewer insurers to choose from in 
the exchanges next year, and about one-third of all counties in the 
United States, along with seven entire States, are set to have just a 
single insurer offering plans in their areas. That includes one county 
in Arizona that, until just last night, would have had no options in 
the exchange at all. I know this is something that Senator McCain has 
been deeply concerned about, and he has introduced good legislation to 
address it.

  ObamaCare co-ops continue to collapse at every turn, too, with less 
than one-third expected to offer plans next year. When these co-ops 
collapse, they can cost taxpayers millions and disrupt coverage for 
thousands of enrollees. They can force patients to start over on their 
deductibles midyear and even to find new doctors. These are the latest 
reverberating echoes of the President's most famous broken promise: 
``If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.'' That was the 
President's promise.
  Here is a Kentuckian from Campbellsburg, who wrote to me after losing 
his insurance:

       I lost my health insurance that I had for many years 
     because of ObamaCare. Instead of something affordable, I face 
     the possibility of struggling to purchase an Obama health 
     plan that costs two to three times what I had been paying.

  To top it off, he said, the ``process of trying to find coverage has 
been a nightmare.''
  Here is something to keep in mind when Democrats try to spin the 
American people on ObamaCare. For all of this chaos and pain for 
middle-class families, ObamaCare still has not achieved its stated 
purpose of universal coverage--not even close. Tens of millions still 
remain uninsured--tens of millions. And those who do have insurance are 
now discovering that simply having health insurance isn't the same 
thing as having health coverage. They have insurance, but it isn't the 
same thing as having health coverage.
  Take one New Jersey man who has suffered for years from chronic 
migraines and needs medication to help alleviate the pain. The moment 
ObamaCare placed him on Medicaid, he lost his access to each of his 
doctors, which meant waiting 4 months to see a new doctor and get a 
prescription for the medication he needs. He said:

       You have a card saying you have health insurance, but if no 
     doctors take it, it's almost like having one of those fake 
     IDs. Your medication is all paid for, but if you can't get 
     the pills, it's worthless.


[[Page S5423]]


  According to a Gallup poll released just this morning, many more 
Americans report that ObamaCare has hurt rather than helped their 
families--and many more Americans say that ObamaCare will make their 
family's health situation worse rather than better over the long run.
  Is it any wonder? Americans were told that ObamaCare would allow them 
to keep the health plans they liked. They couldn't. Americans were told 
that ObamaCare would drive down health care premiums by $2,500 per 
family. It hasn't. Americans were told that ObamaCare would not raise 
taxes on the middle class. It did. Americans were told that ObamaCare 
would increase choice and competition. The very opposite is proving 
true.
  And remember the promise that ``if you like your doctor, you can keep 
your doctor''? It has been broken too. In fact, the Obama 
administration recently erased references to ``keeping your doctor'' 
from its Web site. These entirely predictable consequences are not just 
flukes or quirks of ObamaCare. They are not just small wrinkles in the 
system that will work themselves out with time. They represent 
fundamental flaws built into the law's original design.
  Republicans warned about ObamaCare's consequences repeatedly from the 
very start. Democrats mocked us for doing so and rammed through their 
partisan law anyway. Every single Democrat in the Senate was needed to 
pass it, and they got every one of them.
  I invite Democrats to now consider following the lead of one of the 
President's own former health care advisers who recently penned an op-
ed titled ``How I was wrong about ObamaCare.'' The problems Democrats 
caused for the middle class aren't going away until ObamaCare does. So 
if Democrats are serious about helping the middle class, they will work 
with us to build a bridge beyond ObamaCare to better care. Anything 
else is just more hollow rhetoric.
  Today, 6 years on, ObamaCare is failing the middle class, but the 
President still hasn't offered a serious solution to fix it. He is now 
trying to convince Americans that the solution to his bloated, 
unwieldy, and expensive law is to make it more bloated, more unwieldy, 
and more expensive. In other words, it is more of the same--more of the 
same, just worse. His preferred Presidential candidate says the same 
thing. So do congressional Democrats.
  How can anyone conclude, after reading all these stories about how 
ObamaCare is hurting the middle class, that what we need now is more 
ObamaCare in the form of a government-run plan? That is their solution 
now--more ObamaCare in the form of a government-run plan.
  Look, Democrats can continue to spin us on how great this law is. 
They can continue to tell Americans to ``get over'' this law and its 
pain for the middle class. They can continue to laugh at Americans who 
lose their plans. They can continue to crow about exploiting ``the 
stupidity of the American voter'' to push this partisan law on the 
middle class. Or they can work with us to move beyond the failed 
experiment of ObamaCare. They can prove that they are finally willing 
to put people before ideology.
  This much is clear: ObamaCare is a direct attack on the middle class. 
It hurts the very people it was designed to help. It raises costs, 
crushes choice, and is now crashing down around us. It simply isn't 
working.
  To quote what President Obama said 6 years ago, ``The bottom line is 
this: The status quo of health care is simply unsustainable.''

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