[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3572-3573]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            A SECOND OPINION

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor, as I do every 
week, as a physician who has practiced medicine and taken care of 
families in Wyoming for a quarter of a century, to give a doctor's 
second opinion of the health care law.
  County commissioners from around the State of Wyoming are coming to 
town today for their annual meeting. It was 1 year ago today, at their 
annual meeting, when Nancy Pelosi--then-Speaker of the House--addressed 
that group and said: We have to pass the bill so you can find out what 
is in it.
  That quote has been repeated again and again and again, and people 
now know what is in this health care law. People have found out. Every 
month since this law has been passed, people have found out additional 
things about the health care law they absolutely do not like. Now that 
the American people know what is in the bill, and they know they don't 
like it, let's get to the fundamentals of what the American people have 
asked for. When they asked for a change in health care in this country, 
they said they wanted the care they need from the doctor at a price 
they can afford. The new law fails that test, and it fails miserably.
  It has only taken 1 year to break almost every promise the President 
made when he addressed the Congress and the country. So what I would 
like to do now is take a look, month by month, at how those promises 
were broken. I will start with March, since it is now March and this 
started with Nancy Pelosi's statement in March of 2010.
  One year ago, the Congressional Budget Office evaluated the law to 
see how much it would actually cost. They told us the law could only 
reduce the deficit if it did something about the long-term insolvency 
of Medicare. Instead, the Democrats and the President proposed and 
adopted and signed into law cuts of over $500 billion from Medicare. 
This was not to save Medicare but to start a whole new government 
entitlement program, a decision the CBO said would increase the deficit 
by $260 billion.
  Let's go to April. In April, we learned the costs for those Medicare 
cuts go way beyond dollars and cents. An analysis by the Department of 
Health and Human Services found these cuts could drive up to 15 percent 
of hospitals out of business. For this administration, the shortage of 
hospitals apparently takes a backseat to the shortage of Washington 
bureaucrats.
  Let us go to May. In May, we learned over 200,000 Americans with 
preexisting conditions and expensive health insurance would not be 
eligible to enroll in the new high-risk pools created in the health 
care law; that is, of course, unless they were willing to completely 
drop the insurance they had and wait, without insurance--wait without 
insurance--for 6 months. Only then would they qualify for what was in 
the health care law. For many people with preexisting conditions, who 
were paying higher premiums, they felt that would be irresponsible 
behavior; that it would be risky, put them at financial risk. But that 
is what this administration and this government was proposing.
  In June, after the administration sent over 4 million postcards to 
small businesses--you remember the postcards, the ones claiming those 
small businesses would be eligible for a tax credit--the Associated 
Press blew the whistle. It turned out the only small businesses that 
were fully eligible for these tax credits had to employ fewer than 25 
people. So to be eligible at all, they had to have fewer than 25 
people. Moreover, the Associated Press reported the tax credit drops 
off sharply if the company employs any more than 10 people or if the 
annual salary was averaging more than $25,000. So if you had 10 
employees and paid them, on average, $25,000, you could get the tax 
credit. But once you went to that 11th employee and gave someone a 
raise, you started to lose the attribute the administration said was so 
valuable.
  That was in June. In July, the Obama administration's own Justice 
Department confirmed the individual mandate penalty is a tax increase. 
Well, when ABC News's George Stephanopoulos asked the President if the 
mandate penalty was a tax increase, the President said: ``I absolutely 
reject

[[Page 3573]]

that notion.'' Well, if the President absolutely rejects the notion, 
why is his own Justice Department contradicting him?
  In August, without so much as a hearing before Congress, the 
President made a recess appointment. He tapped Dr. Donald Berwick to 
run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. So how big is this 
Federal agency? Well, it includes oversight of a budget larger than the 
Pentagon's. Dr. Berwick believes the government must ration health care 
and that the only issue is whether we ration with our eyes wide open, 
as he said. Well, the President promised not to ration care, so why did 
he make an appointment of someone who believes it is inevitable to 
ration care and do it in a way without ever allowing the Senate--
Republicans and Democrats alike, Members of this body--to even have a 
hearing so this individual could explain his position, explain his 
previous comments, explain what he has said and written? The President 
refused and did a recess appointment of someone who never testified, 
never came to a confirmation hearing, and he put him in charge of a 
program with a budget larger than the Pentagon's. Can you imagine if 
the Secretary of Defense was made as a recess appointment without a 
congressional hearing? It is unthinkable.
  In September, the administration released new rules estimating that 
80 percent of small businesses would be forced to change the coverage 
of insurance they offer to their employees. These aren't my numbers, 
these are the administration's own numbers. But it was the President 
who said, over and over, if you like the coverage you have today, then 
you can keep it. Now we know that was another one of the President's 
empty promises.
  In October, responding to complaints from unions and corporations, 
the Obama administration began handing out waivers--waivers that 
excused individual groups from ObamaCare's expensive mandates. These 
waivers went mostly to those politically connected to this 
administration. Most American families still have to bear the law's 
expensive burdens. Clearly, for this administration, playing favorites 
is more important than achieving fairness. I think every American ought 
to be able to get a waiver from this health care law.
  In November, a majority of the American people voiced their 
opposition to this law and handed an election response that resulted in 
a significant change in the composition of the House and the Senate 
because the American people knew they did not want this health care 
law.
  The American people were concerned--and they even wondered if this 
law was constitutional--and in December, a Federal judge in Virginia 
ruled it was unconstitutional to force Americans to buy a product. The 
Service Employees International Union, one of the biggest unions in the 
country, also admitted in December that fulfilling the requirements of 
ObamaCare would be financially impossible. This is the same law they 
said the country needed when they lobbied in favor of it.
  In January of this year, the Medicare Actuary called the 
administration's claim the health care law would bring down costs 
``false more than true.'' Also, a Federal judge in Florida struck down 
the entire law as unconstitutional.
  In February--last month--we learned the 2012 budget the IRS submitted 
to Congress specifically mentions the health care law 250 times. They 
mention it as a source of authority and funding for new powers. They 
called the health care law ``the largest set of tax law changes in more 
than 20 years.'' To begin implementing these changes will require 
thousands of new Washington bureaucrats.
  Well, that was through February, and here we are, on March 9. Did the 
American people find out anything new about the health care law in 
March? Absolutely. Last Friday night, the Secretary of Health and Human 
Services granted another 150 waivers--another 150 waivers. Now there 
are over 1,040 waivers covering 2.6 million individuals. These are 
people who don't want to live under the Obama health care law. They 
don't want it to apply to them. I think every American ought to have a 
right to that same waiver. Of those 2.6 million people who received 
waivers, 1.2 million are members of unions. So that is 46 percent of 
the waivers have been given to union members.
  If you look at the Web site you must go to for that information, the 
Secretary has tried to disguise how they label these individuals, and 
so union plans are now called ``multiemployer plans.'' Under this 
change in the name, at the Web site you go to learn about this, are the 
words ``promoting transparency.'' So we have an administration that 
says one thing but does another.
  But the American people now know what is in the law. As they were 
studying the law before the vote, they didn't want it. Now they know 
all about it, and they still don't want it. It is clear it is 
unsustainable, unaffordable, and unconstitutional. It is time to repeal 
and replace it.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Missouri.

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