[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19076-19077]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            A SECOND OPINION

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today as I have so 
many times since the President's health care bill was signed into law, 
with a doctor's second opinion. I do that because I practiced medicine 
in Wyoming, taking care of families from around the State for about a 
quarter of a century.
  When I talk to patients at home and I talk to people on the street, 
when I talk to folks all around my State and around the country, what I 
hear they want from a health care law was an opportunity to have the 
care they need from the doctor they want at a cost they can afford. But 
what we have gotten in this country through this administration and 
this health care law is a law that is bad for patients, in my opinion; 
bad for providers, the nurses and doctors who take care of those 
patients; and terrible for American taxpayers. So I come to the floor 
again with a second opinion today because I am thinking about job 
creation.
  We just heard about the Keystone XL Pipeline and the opportunity 
there with a shovel-ready project to get people back to work. I am 
reminded what former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed after 
the health care law was passed. She said it would ``create 4 million 
jobs.'' She went on to say ``400,000 jobs almost immediately.''
  As we all know, that prediction never came true. In fact, the 
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the health care law will 
actually encourage some people to work fewer hours or to withdraw from 
the labor market altogether.
  This past week when the employment statistics came out we saw that 
over 300,000 Americans have withdrawn from the labor market altogether.
  It is interesting that about the same time the health care law was 
signed, March 2010, Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Senator, 
claimed on ``Meet the Press'':

       . . . as people learn about the bill, and now that the bill 
     is enacted, it's going to become more and more popular.

  In fact, this health care law is less popular now, today, December 
2011, than it was at the time it was signed into law.
  We look at all of these predictions that never came true. It has been 
20 months. The health care law's popularity remains low. The law is in 
front of the Supreme Court to deal with the constitutionality of this 
government going into the homes of American people, telling them they 
must buy a product. It is clear that Washington Democrats and the 
President have miscalculated. They made promise after promise to the 
American people. They asked families, they asked businesses all across 
the Nation, to trust them. The President promised that if you like what 
you have, you can keep it. The American people know that promise has 
been broken. The President said that premiums, health care premiums or 
insurance costs for families would drop by $2,500 per family per year. 
We know that the costs have gone up higher than if the law had never 
been passed in the first place.
  Week after week we hear of more unintended consequences within the 
law, glitches that are found which show additional problems with the 
law and additional promises of the President being broken.
  The American people know that they do not like this health care law. 
When you ask them do you think this health care law was passed for you 
or for someone else, most Americans will tell you that they think it 
was passed for someone else.
  Today I want to talk about two specific examples of problems with 
this health care law and the possible unintended consequences and some 
of the repercussions of the things that have happened with this health 
care law.
  One has to do with the labor statistics that came out on December 2 
of this year. They released updated payroll employment and unemployment 
numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data actually shows that health 
care employment was up in November. It was up for all the wrong 
reasons. The problem is, the health care law's excessive mandates and 
burdensome regulations are prompting the health care industry to create 
additional administrative jobs, not caregiver jobs.
  The health care law was supposed to actually work to get more doctors 
and more nurses and more x-ray techs and physical therapists to take 
care of patients, but that is not what happened. Now we see it is 
administrative jobs that are up, not caregiver jobs. As a matter of 
fact, USA Today printed a half-page article, and the title was ``Health 
Care Jobs Grow . . . in Administration.''
  The article actually talked about a New Hampshire hospital, and that 
hospital--according to the article--was forced to eliminate 5 percent 
of its workforce. So we have a hospital eliminating 5 percent of the 
workforce after the State cut Medicaid funding last year. So here is a 
hospital where 5 percent of the workforce is cut. Many of those workers 
were nurses and other caregivers. When I hear caregivers, I think of 
physical therapists, radiation technologists, nurse's aides.
  Yet in spite of the fact that they had to eliminate 5 percent of its 
workforce, they are actually still hiring. How can that be? Let's 
listen to what the hospital's vice president, Mark Whitney said. He 
said:

       We need to deal with new technology, new services, new 
     regulations, electronic health records, government reporting 
     requirements on quality . . . a lot of this is related to the 
     new Federal health law.

  So they are eliminating nursing positions, eliminating positions of 
caregivers and hiring more people to push paper.
  The President and the Democrats in Congress promised their health 
care law would expand health insurance coverage. Look at what is 
happening now. More and more people are pushing paper.
  It is interesting that what the President and Democrats did not tell 
the American people is that the health care law's oppressive mandates, 
burdensome regulations would actually cause health care employers to 
lay off or stop hiring the very health care professionals needed to 
treat patients.
  Instead, the health care employers must be hiring more clerks, more 
administrators, more paper pushers, all in an effort to figure out and 
then comply with the health care law's rules and

[[Page 19077]]

mandates. I do not believe that is the change most Americans wanted 
when they started to think about health care reform.
  The second example I would like to give is from a column in the 
Washington Post, December 2 of this year--just a week or so ago--
written by George Will. The article is titled ``Choking on Obamacare.'' 
The article talks about the health care law's crushing insurance 
mandates and how those influence both small and large businesses in 
terms of their willingness to actually hire new workers.
  When we have this kind of record unemployment, such as we are dealing 
with in this country, we want to have businesses hire more people, get 
people back to work. That is what makes America grow. That is what 
helps our economy, putting people back to work.
  In the article, they use the example of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's 
restaurants. There are about 3,200 of those restaurants around the 
world. The parent company said they have created about 70,000 jobs, and 
they want to hire more workers. But the CEO of the company, Andy 
Puzder, said they cannot hire more workers because they don't know how 
much they will need to spend on health care. They are planning to spend 
about $18 million on health care, and they say that is just a guess.
  If someone is running a business, they want to be able to figure out 
what their future costs are going to be, what the expenses are going to 
be, and they would rather have a little more predictability than just 
guessing. Thanks to the health care law's complex formulas and many 
regulations which have not yet been released and many of the 
uncertainties that continue to exist, this is a company that is going 
to have to guess about how much they will need to spend on health care.
  What business can afford to guess what one of their largest costs is 
going to be? They are guessing they are going to have to spend about 
twice the amount of money on health care as they did building new 
restaurants last year. So they talk about building new restaurants--and 
those are construction jobs and jobs for the people who work in the 
restaurants providing services--and they are going to end up spending 
twice as much on health care as building new restaurants. It doesn't 
take a lot to realize that hindering a company's ability to build new 
restaurants means fewer available jobs for construction workers and for 
service suppliers in a struggling economy.
  The CEO of the company is right when he says that ``employers 
everywhere will be looking to reduce labor content in their business 
models as Obamacare makes employees unambiguously more expensive.''
  If we want to spur the economy and economic growth and job creation, 
Washington must take its shackles off our job creators. This is just 
one more reason why the President's health care law must be repealed 
and replaced.
  I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRANKEN. 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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