[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 169 (Thursday, October 11, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6793-S6794]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HEALTHCARE INSURANCE PLANS

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to talk for just a few minutes 
about our efforts to get control of health insurance costs in America. 
With me today is one of the colleagues from my office, Ms. Katie Dwyer.
  The Affordable Care Act has not worked for the American people. I 
wish it had. I am disappointed that it hasn't. We were promised upon 
the passage of the Affordable Care Act that our lives would be better. 
Our lives are worse. We were promised upon passage of the Affordable 
Care Act that health insurance would be cheaper and more accessible. It 
has been neither.
  As you know, the Senate has tried to come up with a health insurance 
reform effort to replace the Affordable Care Act. We have not been able 
to do that, but we didn't quit, as you well know. We have started, 
through a number of small but meaningful measures, along with the Trump 
administration, to lower the cost of health insurance for the American 
people, and we have made substantial progress. It has been lost in the 
noise, but it is real, nonetheless. I want to briefly talk about two 
such efforts.
  First, association health plans. As you know, one option that has 
often been missing from our array of health insurance choices is the 
ability to get together as a group of people, sometimes across State 
lines, and buy health insurance. Let me explain what I mean by that. 
Let's suppose you have a chamber of commerce, as many cities and towns 
do. Those chambers of commerce in my State would join with chambers of 
commerce in Mississippi, which would join with chambers of commerce in 
Arkansas, and they would pool all of their members and say to a health 
insurance provider: Here are all these people who want to buy health 
insurance. Give us the best deal you can.
  Through the economy of scale, we could lower the cost of health 
insurance. It makes sense, but forever and a day, it hasn't been legal 
in the United States of America. It now is. In 2017, President Trump 
issued an Executive order directing Federal agencies to draft 
regulations to allow the American people to enjoy the fruits of 
association health plans. In January of this year, the Department of 
Labor proposed a rule expanding the scope of groups and individuals 
eligible for banding together as associations and purchasing coverage 
through an association health plan. The rule was finalized on June 21 
of this year, and it became effective on August 20, 2018.

  I am not suggesting that association health plans are going to solve 
all the problems of access to insurance and cost of health insurance in 
America, but they will help, and they will help because the principle 
underlying association health plans is that they allow the free market 
to work.
  If you are a member of a Rotary Club, and you want to join with 
Rotary Clubs in other States or other parts of your State, pool a large 
group of people together, and go to a health insurance provider and say 
``I have a lot of potential customers here, and I want to buy major 
medical insurance. What kind of deal will you give me?'' that would be 
legal in our country.
  The second thing we have done, Mr. President, as you are well aware--
I consider you an expert in healthcare and in healthcare insurance--has 
to do with what we call short-term, limited-duration health plans.
  What is a short-term, limited-duration health plan? Well, let's 
suppose that I leave my job and I have employer-provided insurance and 
I am not sure what I am going to do next. I have some ideas and I have 
some prospects, but it will probably be 6 months before I will take a 
new job with a new company that will provide health insurance. There 
will be a 6-month gap where I and my family will not have health 
insurance. That is the purpose of short-term, limited-duration health 
plans.
  There are plans offered throughout our country where, if I am in 
between

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jobs, for example, and I don't have insurance and I don't want to 
pursue my prior health insurance through COBRA, I can go buy one of 
these short-term, limited-duration health plans. It is sort of gap 
coverage, if you will.
  Short-term, limited-duration health plans have been around for a long 
time. The problem is, for all practical purposes, the Affordable Care 
Act made them illegal. That is a bit of an overstatement. You could 
still purchase a short-term, limited-duration health plan but for a 
very short period of time, so they were rendered ineffective.
  Under changes made, these plans will allow families and individuals 
to purchase these short-term plans for up to 12 months and in some 
cases, for up to 36 months. That is the result of a new rule 
promulgated by the Trump administration which reverses the Obama-era 
policies that limited these short-term plans to only 3 months with no 
option to renew.
  Why are short-term, limited-duration health plans important? Why are 
they helping to contribute to our efforts to lower the cost of health 
insurance? Here is the problem we are trying to solve, as you well 
know.
  These are the increases in premiums--the cost you pay--to purchase 
health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
  In Texas, from 2017 to 2018, the price of the silver plan--to buy a 
silver plan through the Affordable Care Act--went up 41.3 percent; in 
my State of Louisiana, 12.9 percent; in Oregon, 31.9 percent; in 
Wisconsin, 43.5 percent; in Pennsylvania, 30.6 percent. I could go on 
and on. That is why the Affordable Care Act hasn't worked. No one can 
afford it. I wish it had worked. It gives me no pleasure to say that. 
But we were told health insurance premiums would go down. They have 
gone up.
  By making these short-term, limited-duration health plans available 
for a longer period of time, we are giving people the flexibility to 
extend them. The Trump administration, in my judgement, is making sure 
American families have access to a reliable, affordable health care 
option.
  We had a vote yesterday. Some of my friends on the Democratic side of 
the aisle decided they wanted to end short-term, limited-duration 
health plans. They promulgated a proposal through the Congressional 
Review Act to end them. Fortunately, we defeated that effort.
  What has been the effect in terms of price and availability? Well, 
short-term, limited-duration health plans, in many cases, are 50 to 80 
percent cheaper than plans purchased under the Affordable Care Act.
  You say: Why is that?
  Well, there is no free lunch, and you are not going to get one now. 
If you purchase a short-term, limited duration health plan, it 
oftentimes does not have the same coverage a company is required to 
offer if it is a health insurance company offering health insurance 
under the Affordable Care Act. You don't get the same coverage. That 
doesn't mean you get no coverage. That doesn't mean the short-term, 
limited-duration plan is junk insurance, because it is not. It is 
considered major medical insurance, and issues like lifetime limits, 
annual limits, coverage of preexisting conditions--there are a variety 
of plans out there offered. If you want to purchase a plan that is 
still cheaper than you could buy under ObamaCare that covers 
preexisting conditions, you can.
  This idea that these short-term, limited-duration health plans are 
not insurance at all, or so-called junk insurance, is simply a bunch of 
nonsense. I will give an example. In the last quarter of 2016, a short-
term, limited-duration health plan cost an individual about $124 a 
month. That is a lot of money for a lot of Americans, but it is much 
better when you compare it to an unsubsidized ObamaCare plan that costs 
$393 a month. You could save 70 percent by buying a short-term, 
limited-duration health plan.
  Again, the problem was that under ObamaCare, you could only buy one 
of these short-term plans for 3 months. Now you can buy them for much 
longer.
  The self-styled betters of Washington, DC, the cultured, cosmopolitan 
crowd up here who think they know better than everybody else in 
America, who think they are smarter than all Americans, would do away 
with short-term, limited-duration health plans if they could because 
they think the American people are not smart enough to understand what 
they are buying. We are not going to give them the choice. We are 
smarter than they are. They need to look to us here in Washington, DC, 
to run their lives.
  We saw that effort yesterday on the floor of the Senate. Fortunately, 
we defeated it. The American people are plenty smart. They may not have 
time to read Aristotle every day because they are too busy earning a 
living, but they get it. They watched their health insurance premiums 
rise through the roof as a result of the Affordable Care Act, and many 
of them have sought out this alternative, a short-term, limited-
duration plan, and said: Hey, we know it doesn't cover as much as some 
policies, but it is a heck of a lot cheaper, and we would like to buy 
it and try it for a while.
  As Americans, they are entitled to do that. I am pleased that we 
could reserve the option for them. It was a win for American families, 
in my book.
  We are not giving up on replacing the Affordable Care Act. Again, it 
gives me no joy to say we have to replace it, but it just hasn't 
worked. Any fairminded person who is at all objective would have to 
look at a plan that promised us cheaper policies and more accessibility 
and ended up with more expensive policies and less accessibility and 
say: It just didn't work. We have to replace it, and we are going to 
keep working on it.
  In the meantime, I wanted to point out to my colleagues that we 
continue to chip away at the rising cost of health insurance in 
America.
  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. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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