[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 112 (Thursday, June 29, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3845-S3846]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Healthcare Legislation

  Mr. President, there are subjects that are controversial. If there is 
one that sort of stands out above the rest, it is healthcare. 
Unfortunately, this has become all too much of a polarizing issue 
politically.
  I happened to be in the Senate Chamber on Christmas Eve in 2009, at 
7:30 in the morning, right before Christmas, of course, when our 
Democratic friends jammed through on a party-line vote the Affordable 
Care Act, now known as ObamaCare. I remember the promises the President 
made at the time. President Obama said: If you like your policy, you 
can keep your policy. That proved not to be true. He said: If you like 
your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Well, that wasn't true, either. 
Then he said: Well, you will be able to save $2,500 per family of four 
on your premiums. What experience has shown us is that instead of a 
$2,500 savings, a family of four has experienced a $3,000 increase in 
their premiums. That is 105 percent in the 39 States or so that have 
ObamaCare exchanges.
  ObamaCare has been a failure if you consider the promises that were 
made and the promises that were broken. In experience, what we have 
seen is insurance companies, because of flaws in the design, literally 
leaving the States, leaving insured people with no option when it comes 
to their insurance. Perhaps they do have an insurance policy available, 
but their premiums have gone through the roof, as I indicated earlier--
105 percent on balance since 2013. Their deductible is frequently so 
high that they are denied the benefit of what insurance they have 
because they are basically self-insured at $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, or 
more.

  Yesterday, we announced that our work on a market-driven, patient-
centered healthcare reform plan to replace ObamaCare would continue 
over the next few weeks. As I said yesterday, I expect that we will 
revisit the Better Care Act when we come back for the July work period, 
which is the week after the Fourth of July. As the Republican 
conference has continued our discussion on our plan to replace the 
failed Affordable Care Act, three things have become clear to me.
  Let me start with the first one. The first one is that our Democratic 
colleagues are not willing to lift a finger to help. Surely, they have 
constituents, as I do in Texas, who are contacting them, telling them 
about their horror stories with regard to no access to policies, 
premiums that are sky high, and deductibles that are unaffordable. 
Apparently, they are unmoved by those stories.
  As we continue to move toward a Republican healthcare solution, which 
is what we are left with when our Democratic colleagues refuse to 
participate, I want to remind my colleagues as to why we have this 
choice before us and why the hard work is worth it.
  All of us have our stories from our States about premium hikes and 
lost coverage and frustration at the hands of a convoluted law, but I 
want to talk about the story of a young lady from Fort Worth, TX.
  She is a nurse who graduated from Texas Christian University in 2010. 
By her own account, she is young, in good health, and has a fulfilling 
career in the healthcare industry. Her first job took her to the Rio 
Grande Valley in South Texas. While she had to pay out-of-pocket for 
care, she only had a monthly healthcare premium of $71, but after the 
ObamaCare bill passed in 2013, she said: ``My plan disappeared.'' In 
other words, she was one of those who suffered from the broken promise 
that if you liked your plan, you could keep it, because it disappeared.
  There was a new plan, but her deductible rose to $8,500. Now, I do 
not know many people who could pay out-of-pocket $8,500 for their 
healthcare before their health insurance kicked in. To add insult to 
injury, her monthly premium skyrocketed from $71 to $300. She is paying 
$300 a month for a policy with a deductible of $8,500. It is not worth 
very much. One year later, this plan under Blue Cross Blue Shield also 
disappeared, leaving her to consider the cheapest marketplace plan for 
$400 a month. She started at $71, went to $300, and then went to $400 a 
month for, what she called, a ``dismal'' policy.
  Ultimately, she did find a more affordable plan for $247 a month. 
Yet, every year, she has seen her premium grow. She started out at $71, 
finally to end with $247. That is three times-plus what she originally 
paid, and her premium continues to grow every year.
  Yet, as a nurse, her perspective is not just about herself. She cares 
passionately about her patients as well.
  She wrote this to me:

       I'm irritated, but at least I can afford it. But who can't? 
     A lot of folks and a lot of my patients! I certainly couldn't 
     if I had a family.

  Doing nothing is not an option, which is why I am mystified that our 
Democratic colleagues have simply refused to participate in the 
process. For 7 years, we have promised the American people we would 
replace ObamaCare with something better that would include market-based 
solutions in order to provide care that more people could afford. This 
is based on a principle that, I believe, is a core principle: If people 
have the choice between products, they will choose the one that

[[Page S3846]]

is best for them at a price they can afford. Competition actually 
benefits consumers by providing a better product at a cheaper cost. 
That is what market-driven competition is all about.
  To me, the choice is pretty simple. We either get rid of this failed 
law and replace it with real reform or ObamaCare will continue to 
collapse, and millions more people will continue to be harmed.
  Now, this is something former President Clinton said, you will 
remember, during the campaign, which proved to be a little bit of an 
embarrassing comment when he said that ObamaCare was the ``craziest 
thing in the world.'' This was the former President of the United 
States, a Democrat, who was the husband of the Democratic nominee for 
President in the 2016 election. He called ObamaCare the ``craziest 
thing in the world'' because he knew well that no matter who won the 
election, whether it was Hillary Clinton or President Trump, that we 
would be talking about how to protect the American people from this 
failing system known as ObamaCare.
  Yet our Democratic friends are apparently resigned to continue to let 
the American people suffer rather than try to do what is right and help 
make things better.
  The work we are left to do is hard, but it is no excuse for not 
trying. ObamaCare is hurting our country, and we have a chance to make 
it better and to right the path. I remain hopeful and optimistic 
because doing nothing is not an option.
  Let me just conclude with this observation: What we are trying to 
accomplish with the Better Care Act encompasses four things.
  First, we are trying to stabilize the current insurance market to 
make sure there are actually insurance policies available for people to 
buy rather than to see them flee the marketplace.
  Second, we are trying to make sure we do everything we can to bring 
insurance premiums down--in other words, to make it more affordable--by 
eliminating some of the mandates that make it unaffordable right now.
  The third thing we are trying to do is to protect people with 
preexisting conditions. The Better Care Act or the BCRA as it is 
known--the Better Care Reconciliation Act--maintains the status quo 
when it comes to protecting people against preexisting conditions. We 
do not want anybody who has lost his coverage to be denied coverage 
because of a preexisting condition when he tries to buy insurance from 
another insurance company. That is what happens when you change your 
job. That is what happens when insurance companies decide to leave the 
marketplace. They simply cannot afford to continue to write policies so 
you have to change policies, like this young lady--the nurse whom I 
mentioned--had to do on a couple of occasions.
  The fourth thing we are trying to do is to stabilize one of the most 
important safety net programs in our country, which is Medicaid. There 
are three basic entitlement programs--Medicare, Medicaid, and Social 
Security. We are doing everything we can to stabilize Medicaid because 
we believe it is important for low-income citizens to have access to 
healthcare through Medicaid if they cannot afford it through private 
insurance.
  I want to just address some of the misinformation and, I think, 
outright falsehoods we have heard from some people about what the 
Better Care Reconciliation Act does to Medicaid.
  I keep hearing people say this cuts Medicaid. It reduces the rate of 
growth of Medicaid, which is true. We basically put Medicaid on a 
budget, and we grow it year, after year, after year, as I will mention 
in a moment, but nowhere other than in Washington, DC, would anybody 
consider this a cut.
  For example, in 2017, we will spend $393 billion on Medicaid. Now, 
because this is a State-Federal cost share, in my State, it is either 
the No. 1 or No. 2 most expensive item in our spending under our State 
budget each year. It crowds out a lot of other things because it is so 
expensive. Yet it is uncontrolled, so, in 2017, we will see $393 
billion spent.
  At the end of the budget window--10 years, reflected by 2026--the 
Federal Government will have spent, under the Budget Control Act, $464 
billion. That is a $71 billion difference between 2017 and 2026. In no 
other alternate universe that I am aware of would this be considered a 
cut. This is an increase in Medicaid.
  Now, we can have discussions--and we should and we are having 
discussions--as to: Is this an adequate rate of growth of Medicaid to 
meet the growing population and to make sure people are taken care of?
  Nothing we do in this bill drops anybody from Medicaid, and the 
suggestion that it does is simply, I would suggest, not accurate, nor 
is it a cut. We can have discussions about what the proper rate of 
growth is, and we are having those discussions, but it is a fact, 
reflected by the Congressional Budget Office--which is the official 
scorekeeper in Congress--that, in 2017, we will spend $393 billion, and 
under the Better Care Reconciliation Act, we will spend $464 billion, 
which is a difference of $71 billion over that 10 years.
  I know we will have a lot more to talk about as we continue to debate 
this bill. My hope is that we will have a bill that we will be able to 
send to the Congressional Budget Office, which will take a couple of 
weeks to score--that is a requirement--before we can actually bring it 
to the floor. I hope that at some point in the not-too-distant future, 
we will be able to bring a bill to the floor and have a real debate and 
have an amendment process that will allow everybody and anybody in the 
Senate to offer amendments in order to change or modify the bill.
  In the end, I believe we have to decide because doing nothing is not 
an option. Doing nothing means consigning the people who are being hurt 
by ObamaCare today to continue to be hurt and to be priced out of 
healthcare entirely. To my mind, that is not a responsible thing for us 
to do.
  That is why I support the Better Care Reconciliation Act. It is not a 
perfect bill, but it is the next step in helping us turn our current 
healthcare disaster around. At some point, I hope our Democratic 
friends will join with us, as they have done under the two bills I 
mentioned earlier, for this is one of the most important things we will 
do in the Congress. If you think about what touches people's lives in 
such a personal way, it is hard to think of anything that does that 
more than healthcare.
  Right now, we are hearing a lot of scare stories and inaccuracies 
about what this bill does. There is plenty of room for debate and 
differences of opinion based on the facts, but as the saying goes, you 
are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own 
facts. Facts are facts, and based on the facts, we ought to argue our 
policy differences and then vote.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blunt). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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