[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10777-10779]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today as someone who 
has practiced medicine in the State of Wyoming since 1983, taking care 
of families across the great State of Wyoming as an orthopedic surgeon 
and also as a medical director of the Wyoming Health Care, which is a 
program to offer low-cost medical screenings, health screenings to help 
people; early detection, because we know that is a way to keep down the 
cost of care--to help them find problems before they get too far 
progressed so we can get effective treatments.
  This is a very successful program. Often doctors are asked for their 
opinions on issues. Then, if a patient has a question, they ask for a 
second opinion from a second physician.
  Well, I come to the floor today to offer my second opinion on this 
health care bill. I have been doing this week after week, as we have 
had a year-long debate and discussion about the health care bill that 
has now been signed into law. I come to the floor because it seems that 
every week, every week since the bill became law, there has been a new 
revelation, a new unintended consequence that the people of America 
look at and say: This is a bill, now a law, that was not passed for me. 
It is to help someone else.
  The promises the American people heard when the bill was being 
debated and discussed, we are now finding that those promises have been 
broken. Again this week one of those major promises, fundamental behind 
the health care law, has been broken. The American people are concerned 
and distressed because it affects them personally. They believe they 
were misled.
  The goal of the health care legislation last year was to lower the 
cost of health care. There is agreement all across the country we need 
to do that; we need to lower the cost of care, to improve quality of 
care. Absolutely. It is in the best interest of all Americans if we can 
improve the quality of care; then, of course, to increase access to 
care. The more we can do to allow more people in this country to have 
access to care, the better it is.
  Lower cost, improved quality, improved access. Well, that is not what 
this Senate Chamber passed because I believe the bill that was passed 
is clearly not going to lower cost, and the Congressional Budget Office 
agrees. It is not going to improve quality, and it is not going to 
improve access, as we see from statements from the Secretary of Health 
and Human Services about the shortage of primary care providers, the 
shortage of physicians and nurse practitioners and others to help. So I 
continue to believe the law we now have passed is bad for patients, bad 
for payers, the people who are going to pay the health care bill of 
this country, and bad for providers, the nurses and doctors who take 
care of those patients.
  I believe the bill fundamentally is going to result in higher costs 
for patients, less access for care, and unsustainable spending. The 
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said: You are going to have to 
first pass the bill to find out what is in it. Once again, this past 
week, we have learned about something new that is in the health care 
law that many Americans have found surprising.
  I would like to contrast a speech President Obama gave 1 year ago 
this week, 1 year ago yesterday, at the American Medical Association 
meeting in Chicago. I would like to quote from the speech given by the 
President, and then contrast it to regulations that have been sent out 
earlier this week. What a difference a year makes. President Obama 
said:

       So let me begin by saying this--

  This was a year ago--

       I know that there are millions of Americans who are content 
     with their health care coverage. They like their plan and 
     they value their relationship with their doctor.

  He went on to say:

       And that means that no matter how we reform health care we 
     will keep this promise. If you like your doctor, you will be 
     able to keep your doctor. Period.

  He went on to say:

       If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep 
     your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away no 
     matter what.

  Well, those are very reassuring words to the 170 million people in 
this country who get their health insurance coverage through their 
employer at work. There were 170 million people reassured 1 year ago by 
the words of the President of the United States that if they like what 
they have, they can keep it.
  This is the line that the President has continued to repeat. Most 
recently he gave the same reassurance to the senior citizens of this 
country in a townhall meeting he had just a little over a week ago. But 
what we are seeing now, instead of allowing Americans to keep their 
doctors and their health

[[Page 10778]]

care plans, is another broken promise, a broken promise to the American 
people.
  On Friday of last week, the Associated Press reported that 51 
percent, over half of all Americans, a majority of those 170 million 
who get their health insurance through work, will no longer necessarily 
be able to keep the health insurance they have.
  In the 25 years or so that I have practiced medicine, I know how 
important it is, having worked with patients, worked with people, what 
happens when they lose the coverage or have to change their coverage. 
It is very distressing. Sometimes it can be disorienting to them as 
they learn what new coverage they have, what they lost. So people who 
felt reassured last year by the President's comments are now in a 
situation where 51 percent of them are going to lose the coverage they 
have.
  The Washington Post this week, Tuesday, June 15: The administration 
estimated that by 2013, health plans covering as many as 69 percent of 
employees could lose protected status. For small employers, the small 
businesses of this country, the total could be as high as 80 percent.
  I mean, could that really be true? I find it astonishing. We have had 
calls to our office: Is that really true? We have talked to patients 
and people that I have taken care of because I have been back in 
Wyoming this past weekend and ran into a number of former patients of 
mine. They said: Is that really going to happen?
  Let's see what the rules are that came out. These are the rules that 
came out on Monday. I mean, it is interesting to get rules on health 
care, and what are the first two lines? Department of the Treasury. 
Internal Revenue Service.
  The Internal Revenue Service is writing the rules and regulations 
dealing with the health care bill. It goes on with the Department of 
Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services. This is titled, 
``Interim Final Rules For Group Health Plans And Health Insurance 
Coverage.''
  This is 121 pages. I am not going to go through all of it, but I 
would like to call your attention to page 54. On page 54 there is a 
table, and the table is called ``Estimates of the Cumulative Percentage 
of Employer Plans Relinquishing,'' having to give up, ``Their 
Grandfathered Status.''
  What it means is the percentage of employer plans of people who have 
the insurance they like they are not going to be able to keep.
  They have a low-end estimate, a mid-range estimate and a high-end 
estimate of all of the employer plans in the country. It covers 170 
million Americans. It says by the year 2013, just a few years from now, 
51 percent, 51 percent of Americans will lose what they have now. It 
talks about the high estimate for the small employer plans, 80 percent.
  So how can that be true? So 80 percent of small employers--that is 
the lifeblood of our economy, and we are at a point in this country 
where we have unemployment at 9.7 percent, and small business is the 
engine, the engine that grows the economy. Seventy percent of all new 
jobs in this country are created by small businesses. Yet for people 
who work in small businesses, it looks like up to 80 percent of them, 
over the next couple of years, are not going to be able to keep the 
health insurance they have now.
  Why? Because the rules and regulations that have come out related to 
the law that has now been passed, in spite of the President's promise 
right here behind us--you will be able to keep your doctor, period; you 
will be able to keep your health care plan, period--the American people 
are finding that those words, those words, are not being held out in 
what was passed into law and the regulations that have now been 
written.
  Headline, Wednesday, June 16, today, national newspaper: ``So much 
for `Keeping Your Plan.'''
  Now, actually there are some people who can keep their plans--very 
few.
  Headline, ``Union Contract Can Exempt Plans From ObamaCare.'' So you 
do not get to necessarily keep your plan, it says, unless a union 
negotiated your coverage. The administration has granted a special 
exemption to those, and apparently only those, health care plans, a 
special exemption offered by the administration, according to this 
article, for those whose plans have been negotiated by the unions.
  You do not have to go very far. All you need to do is open a 
newspaper. This is on Capitol Hill just the other day, Tuesday, June 8. 
It says, talking about health care, there is a picture of a doctor with 
an eye chart: ``Comprehensive, but Not for All.''
  ``Health reform ban on annual limits may end up hurting lower wage 
workers.'' W/ll, I thought that the whole idea behind this was to help 
additional workers, to help additional workers get coverage, get care. 
First paragraph:

       Part of the health care overhaul due to kick in this 
     September, could end up stripping more than a million people 
     of their insurance coverage, violating a key goal of 
     President Barack Obama's reforms.

  There it is in black and white: ``Violating a key goal of President 
Barack Obama's reforms.'' These are identifiable victims of ObamaCare, 
losers under ObamaCare. Promises made and promises broken.
  What about the President's promise on the cost of care, bending the 
cost curve down? Well, yesterday, in The Hill:

       Report projects a rise of 9 percent in employers' health 
     costs in 2011.

  But was it not Obama who said his legislation was going to actually 
allow Americans to have a lowering of their premiums by $2,500 per year 
per family? Well, how does that work with the projected rise in cost? 
So, once again, the American people heard one thing and now they are 
being delivered something very different.
  That is why I come to the Senate floor today--to say it is time to 
repeal this legislation and replace it, replace this legislation with 
legislation that delivers more personal responsibility and more 
opportunities for individual patients, a patient-centered health care 
bill, a bill that allows Americans to buy insurance across State lines. 
We need a bill that will give more competition and will allow the costs 
to come down, that gives people who own their own health insurance an 
opportunity to get the same tax relief big companies get. That is 
important. That will help people.
  How about a bill that includes a provision to give individual 
incentives to people who take responsibility for their own health care 
and their own health, do things like the people who come to the Wyoming 
Health Fairs, early detection, early treatment.
  We know, and I have seen this in my years of practicing medicine, 
about half of all of the money we spend in this country on health care 
is on just 5 percent of the people. If we can focus on those 5 percent 
and help them with healthy lifestyles and good choices, we can get down 
the cost of their care.
  Then we need a bill that deals with lawsuit abuse. That will help 
lower the amount of defensive medicine practiced and help lower the 
cost of care, plus one that allows small businesses to join together 
and then shop much more effectually to buy a lower cost health 
insurance plan.
  Well, you can imagine what is happening right now in small businesses 
across America, as I have just brought to the attention of the Senate. 
When 80 percent, up to 80 percent of people with small business health 
plans who are getting their insurance that way, according to the new 
regulations put out by the Internal Revenue Service, as well as the 
Department of Health and Human Services, up to 80 percent are not going 
to be able to keep the coverage they now have and now enjoy under their 
current plans come the year 2013.
  Those are the things that will make a difference. That is why I come 
to the floor today. I offer my second opinion about health care law, 
and now it is the law that I think is going to end up--and the American 
people understand this, and they see through it--is going to end up 
being bad for patients who need care, bad for payers, people paying for 
their health care costs, and the taxpayers of this country, as well as 
bad for providers, the nurses and the

[[Page 10779]]

doctors and the hospitals who take care of those patients.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Minnesota.

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