[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 209 (Thursday, December 11, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8661-S8663]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Healthcare
Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the
unaffordability of healthcare, a crisis created and perpetuated by my
Democrat colleagues across the aisle.
Fifteen years ago, without a single Republican vote, congressional
Democrats authored and signed into law the so-called Affordable Care
Act, also known as ObamaCare.
Ever since, congressional Democrats, without Republican support, have
continued to prop up this failed system with tax credits and bogus
incentives to hide a broken foundation. Congressional Democrats even
expanded these tax credits under the guise of the pandemic--again, on a
wholly partisan basis--not once but twice, which included setting a
deadline for their expiration this year.
Now they are expecting the American public to believe that
Republicans are culpable--culpable--for what the Democrats have done.
They have clearly broken the system.
When ObamaCare passed in 2010, Democrats promised the American people
that this legislation would make insurance affordable. Sadly, this
promise has gone unfulfilled. I have heard from constituents across my
home State of Tennessee who are grappling with the realities of this
broken system.
In 2014, the premium for a benchmark plan was $197. That is 2014. In
2026, that premium is expected to be $711. That is an increase of 260
percent.
As if this wasn't enough evidence, take the story from a constituent
in East Tennessee who is self-employed. He and wife own and operate a
consulting firm. For his family of three, their insurance premium for
the exact same plan they had this year will increase from $1,400 a
month to $2,200 a month; no new coverage, no additional family members,
just higher cost from an inefficient and fraud-ridden system that is
collapsing under its own weight.
This is not affordable health insurance. If health insurance were
truly affordable, then Tennesseans like the one I just mentioned would
not be forced to rely on taxpayer subsidies just to afford their
monthly premium, not to mention out-of-pocket costs, copays, and
coinsurance.
Beyond affordability, the Democrats promised to ``fix'' the
healthcare system without adding to the national deficit. Their reforms
were supposed to lower the deficit by more than $100 billion. Instead,
according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, ObamaCare
has cost taxpayers an additional $1.3 trillion. The deficit has
continued to grow, with healthcare spending being a driver of that
deficit.
Welcome to socialism, my friends.
ObamaCare was supposed to ``end abuses by insurance companies'' and
create what they call a ``robust and competitive'' marketplace.
Well, ObamaCare has been nothing but a profit-making machine for
insurance companies. ObamaCare has funded tens of billions of dollars,
especially in pandemic-era subsidies, directly to insurance companies.
And we have seen insurance companies' profits balloon to historic
levels.
Now, let's talk about the fraud that prevails in the ObamaCare
system. We will never have a competitive marketplace when that
marketplace is riddled with fraud.
As a test for the ease and the extent of the fraud that plagues
ObamaCare, the GAO created applications for fictitious individuals--all
using invalid information--and submitted these fake applications to the
Federal ObamaCare exchanges for enrollment. The results--shocking.
Of the 24 invalid applications that were submitted, 23 of them--that
is more than 95 percent of the applications--were wrongly approved for
subsidized health insurance. Get that. Over 95 percent of these
fraudulent applications were approved to be subsidized in ObamaCare.
As of this September, 18 of the 20 fake enrollees for 2025 are still
covered. Not only did the ObamaCare exchange not identify these
fraudulent identities, but insurers didn't either. Why? Well, perhaps
it is because those 18 applicants paid more than $10,000 per month to
the insurance companies for these nonexistent patients. The money
wasn't paid to the patients. The money was paid directly to the
insurance companies to the tune of $10,000 each. No wonder the
insurance companies aren't complaining. No costs, no services provided;
it all falls to the bottom-line profitability of the insurers when this
happens.
The solution to this floundering system, created by the Democrats
without a single Republican vote, is certainly not what Democrats have
proposed today. They want to continue wasting Americans' hard-earned
dollars.
Earlier today on the Senate floor there was a stark difference of
views. On one side, Senate Democrats proposed a 3-year extension along
with the repeal of anti-fraud provisions that we passed during the
Working Families Tax Cut. More fraud, more waste, more ill-obtained
profits for insurers. This unserious, partisan proposal would cost a
whopping $83 billion. It would not
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lower premiums for 93 percent of Americans by a single cent. I opposed
that effort.
Instead, Republicans are offering real solutions, solutions that will
lower benchmark premiums by 11 percent, save $30 billion by
appropriating cost-sharing reductions, and empower patients to make
their own healthcare decisions.
There are further Republican solutions being debated right now,
solutions that add serious fraud protections and ensure that wealthy
Americans are not receiving taxpayer subsidies, solutions that ensure
no Federal funds are used for abortions; that ensure illegal immigrants
aren't accessing these credits to free-ride and overwhelm the American
healthcare system.
I hope my Democratic colleagues will stop playing their political
games and begin to work with Republicans to actually lower the cost of
healthcare for the American people.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion
today following the votes on the floor this morning about healthcare
and healthcare costs.
It was just about a year ago exactly--it was December 12 of last
year--I spoke to a reporter from Alaska, and we were talking about just
the staggering costs of healthcare costs and what we were seeing with
the rise at that time. I pointed out to this reporter that Alaska had
already seen 3 years of premium increases that exceeded 50 percent in
total. This was putting a pressure on individual and household budgets
in a way that people were telling me that this is an unsustainable
trend.
I said then that we are going to have to address the issue of the
enhanced premium tax credits at the Federal level. We are going to need
to address the fact that these come to an end at the end of this
calendar year. And I said then we have got a year to kind of figure
this out, to buy time to pursue what I feel is important, and that is
true reform--some of the long-term reforms that will not just help us
address the cost of health insurance but, more importantly, the overall
cost of healthcare in this country. That is the driver there. That is
the problem.
So that was about a year ago--almost exactly a year ago, and yet here
we are. Little has changed. Key transparency in legislation remains
stalled. Too many Alaskans are facing premium increases that are now
approaching 500 percent. Think about what that means. I have shared
with some colleagues a text that I received from a friend of mine in
Fairbanks, and she and her husband will be looking at the potential for
premiums in the range of $36,000. Nobody--nobody that I know of--can
afford premiums for $36,000.
So we know we have got a job here in the Congress. We know that we
have to address this issue of rising costs to healthcare. But what we
are facing right now, literally, on this 11th day of December, the
immediate issue is this expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits
and this cliff that is in front of thousands of Alaskans--about 24,000
Alaskans. Millions of Americans are facing this.
So this morning we saw what we saw. The Senate voted on two dueling
healthcare proposals to address this healthcare cliff. Both proposals
were partisan in nature. Neither one was written in a committee setting
or reported through what we refer to as the regular order process.
Unfortunately, neither really included any attempt at compromise.
Neither tried to gain the support from the other side or to address
perhaps the very valid concerns that were raised by the other side, and
so it is no surprise that we are where we are, which is two failed
votes on the Senate floor.
And those measures failed. But, Mr. President, I would just suggest
that we have failed. We have failed. This institution here in this
Senate, we failed to work together. We failed to reach consensus. We
failed to help all those who are facing these, shockingly, completely
unaffordable increases in their healthcare premiums as they are looking
at the new year.
We voted on a Democratic proposal as part of the agreement that
allowed us to reopen the Federal Government after a record-setting but
ultimately a pointless 43-day shutdown. And the headline of that
measure was that it would extend the current subsidies for 3 years.
Unfortunately--unfortunately--there is no recognition of the much
needed reforms. The two speakers preceding me both pointed out there
are flaws in the existing system. If we are going to be addressing a
program and a continuation of it, I think it is our responsibility to
make sure that we are making sure that these programs don't have ways--
that they are not being abused.
We also voted on a Republican proposal which would have prefunded
health savings accounts. This is something that so many Americans are
very familiar with, but it would allow for Americans to receive dollars
more directly in their hands, to go in their pockets for their own care
while also funding cost-sharing reductions projected to reduce premium
costs down the line and some other provisions. But it was good work by
the chairman of the HELP Committee as well working with the chairman of
the Finance Committee. And I was encouraged by what we were beginning
to see there, but there were flaws, quite honestly, with that approach
as well.
So where did I end up? I ended up voting in favor of the motion to
proceed to both of these proposals, but I want to be clear here. It is
not because I fully endorse the Democratic proposal and I fully endorse
the Republican proposal. Neither of the proposals, in fairness, met the
challenge, as far as I am concerned.
The Democratic proposal would have extended the status quo under the
Affordable Care Act which, as we have heard, has failed to restrain
costs, and it has done so for longer than necessary to build the
stability that I think we need to develop better policy.
More importantly, it included no reforms--no reforms whatsoever. We
have seen examples of how the system has been abused, and as stewards
of Federal taxpayer dollars, it is incumbent on us to address matters
like that.
So making sure that there were legitimate reforms, making sure that
we don't set up another cliff just like we would have done under the
Democratic proposal--it would have set up another cliff in 2029. And
that cliff would look even more staggering if we just continued to
allow and subsidize unchecked premium growth.
And then on the Republican proposal over here, again, I give credit
to the authors of that measure because it did focus on some longer term
reforms that I do believe can help people over time. But what it didn't
address was the immediate situation that folks are facing: this
immediate cliff, the imminent pain that is going to come with this
massive spike in premiums in Alaska.
Again, maybe it is more extreme in other States, but we are still one
of the 50 States. And when you are talking about premium increases that
are doubling or, in many cases, tripling, that is not sustainable. So
we had a proposal that had its flaws. There were also some provisions
in the Republican bill that we know were not going to garner support
from across the aisle.
And I guess where I am today--as most Members have left the Chamber,
have left the building, they are going back to their States for the
weekend--we are leaving with unfinished business, and this is something
that we have known was coming for a long time, for a long time. It is
not like this just crept up on us. We had a chance to address it in
budget reconciliation, but we couldn't agree to do so. We were told:
No, no, no. You know, we have got a lot of time on that. We will do it
later.
That would have been a win on healthcare. We would have avoided this
anxiety that we are in right now. We had a chance to address it, to
avoid or end the shutdown. The same story; we weren't able to do that,
and so we let the clock run. We wait and we wait and we settle for
competing proposals, and now we are where we predicted--where I
predicted we would be. We failed in both, and nobody wins from that.
Nobody wins from this either politically and certainly not in real
life.
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As I was coming over here, I asked some of the folks that were with
me--and I said: What day is Festivus Day? Festivus, for those who are
not familiar, is kind of like the day of grievances, which apparently
is December 23, just before Christmas. I am not here to do a preemption
of Festivus and just air grievances because I don't think that is what
people want us to do here.
I think they want us to try to figure out, OK, you have demonstrated
what you can't do. Now, can you demonstrate what you can do? And that
is where I want to put us. I refuse to accept that where we are right
now, which is two failed bills, is the best that we can do.
I voted to proceed to both proposals, not because they solve the
problem, not because they are great policy, but because I think they
kind of represented the least bad options available to us at this
eleventh hour and because I think we should be talking about it. We
should be debating them, amending them, having an opportunity to do so
on the floor, and seeing if we can't make some progress there.
Sometimes out in the open gets us somewhere--not too often these days.
But I will tell you the alternative, which is doing nothing and letting
people--really letting people suffer here, I think, is worse.
So, again, today, we showed the country what we can't do, but I
wanted to show that there are bipartisan votes in the Senate that are
eager, that are anxious for a bipartisan compromise. And I don't think
it is too late for that. It is December 11 here. The year is not over.
Our session is not over. I agree that we don't have a lot of time, and
we know that. But I think we can still come up with something that,
again, would give people in this country comfort knowing that my
premiums are not going to double and triple in the calendar year 2026.
So that is exactly what I am hoping the Senate is going to do and
what I challenge every one of us to focus on before we adjourn this
year.
And it is not like we are starting from scratch here. The ingredients
for what we are going to need have been out there. We just need to get
them all together and figure out how we are going to bake this. I think
we know a lot of the work has already been done. We know the general
contours of what an agreement could look like.
By my count, there are no fewer than eight plans that are out there.
There are probably more than that that we can draw from. You have got
the Democratic bill that we saw, which was the 3-year offering. You saw
the Cassidy-Crapo effort. Senators Moreno and Collins have a proposal.
I have put forward a proposal. Senator Rick Scott has, and Senator
Hawley, Senator Marshall, Senator Husted. There is a lot that is out
there. And so many have been speaking about this for so long now.
I have put legislation on the table, a 2-year extension of the
premium tax credits, to buy us time to avoid this situation. I have
also proposed ways to address it in both budget reconciliation and in
my frameworks, when we were trying to figure out how we handle the
shutdown. So there is not a lot of new stuff out here. We know what the
component pieces are.
And it is not just in this body. Look at what is happening down the
hall here.
Two--two--bipartisan proposals by Members of the House, and they are
circulating for signatures so that they might be able to discharge and
be able to move this. To me, I think that is really significant. You
have got Members in the House that are coming together, and they are
going to stand out and put their name up front on a bipartisan effort.
Maybe, it is not everything that they want, but they are willing to put
something out there because they believe that the American people
demand and deserve a solution.
And so I am encouraged. I am really encouraged by the momentum that
we are seeing coming out of the other body as a way out.
And so if you take time to look at the proposals that are out there,
you can see where we need to go. You can see where there is overlap.
You can see where there are areas that serve as the foundation for an
agreement. I think there are so many that agree that we have got to
have some extension of an enhanced premium tax credit. Maybe it is not
3 years. Maybe it is. We know it is at least 1 year. Perhaps it is 2
years.
Most agree on the need for reasonable reforms to ensure that these
credits are going to go to those who need them most and to protect the
taxpayers who foot the bill from the waste, fraud, and abuse, because
we know that that is real. We have to address that. We have got some
good measures, good ideas on what to do there. They are already
written. We can plug them into a bipartisan measure.
And there is consensus for reasonable limits on who can receive the
credits and an understanding that reforms need to be made, again, to
reduce the fraud in the system.
And I think we can do some of that through some of the program
integrity reforms and by addressing plans where the customer is not
currently paying any premium whatsoever.
So, again, I acknowledge the great work that Senator Cassidy has put
forward with proposing solutions that give families options here when
it comes to their healthcare choices.
So here we are on December 11. We have taken the partisan votes, and
now we need to move forward. We need to develop a bipartisan product
based on what we do agree on. And I firmly believe--I firmly believe--
that it is in our reach, if we try, but to get there in this short
period that we have in front of us, we have got to remember that none
of us get to design this on our own. None of us will get exactly
everything we want. The time for that is over.
We have proven that no specific plan of that nature has the kind of
support that we need. So we have got to do better. We have got to do
better. We can't just say: Happy holidays. Brace for next year. That is
our message to you.
We need to focus on the people who are going to be hurt if we do
nothing, and we need to set aside the politics and the partisanship
that are preventing us from helping them.
I think there is still a consensus to be had here, and know that I
stand at the ready to do everything that I can to help in that effort
before we adjourn at the end of this year.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.