[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15526-15527]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HEALTH CARE EXCHANGES

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of my 
colleague from Illinois, and I have heard him make reference to the 
insurance exchanges that opened last week. It was 1 week ago President 
Obama's health insurance exchanges opened, and by all accounts it was a 
complete disaster.
  The administration had 3\1/2\ years to prepare for the big launch. It 
spent months and millions of dollars advertising the start date. Yet on 
October 1, the American people had their first chance to sign up, and 
the exchanges flopped. It was a complete fiasco.
  The administration tried to say it was caught off guard. They said 
they were caught off guard by too many people going to the Web site on 
the first day. Even Saturday Night Live ridiculed the excuse. They 
said: That is like 1-800-Flowers getting caught off guard on 
Valentine's Day.
  There were glitches the first day, but they lasted the whole week--
the entire first week. The question is, Did the administration finally 
get its act together? Well, actually, no, it didn't. The past weekend 
they had to pull down the Web site to try to fix some of the worst 
problems. USA TODAY, a newspaper whose editorials have actually in the 
past supported the health care law, had as yesterday's headline: 
``Health sites generate more error messages than coverage.'' That was 
the headline. The subheadline: ``Exchange launch turns into an 
inexcusable mess.''
  An inexcusable mess. And they go on:


[[Page 15527]]

       . . . the administration managed to turn the experience for 
     most of those visitors into a nightmare. Websites crashed, 
     refused to load, or offered bizarre and incomprehensible 
     choices. Even though the system was shut down for repairs 
     over the weekend, Monday's early reports continued to suggest 
     an epic screw-up.

  The front page of the Wall Street Journal on Monday read: ``Software, 
Design Defects Cripple Health-Care Website.''
  One does not take down a Web site for minor glitches. These are signs 
of major trouble. Some of us have been warning that the administration 
has failed to prepare properly. We said there would be security holes 
that would expose people to fraud and identity theft. It turns out the 
administration didn't even get to the point where the security flaws 
would actually matter early on because people couldn't even start 
entering their personal information. The exchanges were failing to 
launch. People got repeated error messages, and they couldn't fill out 
forms or applications. They couldn't create an account to start looking 
at the most basic of information to even make comparisons. When they 
tried to telephone to get help, they found long wait times and they got 
disconnected entirely. Even the administration's biggest cheerleaders 
admitted defeat. One reporter at MSNBC spent so much time trying to 
show viewers how to sign up for the exchange Web site online that she 
actually gave up. They were playing this on television. She finally 
threw in the towel saying:

       If I were signing up for myself, this is where my patience 
     would be exhausted.

  The Wall Street Journal tried to find out what went wrong. It talked 
to computer experts, who looked at the healthcare.gov Web site, and 
what the computer experts said is, ``The site appeared to be built on a 
sloppy software foundation.'' According to those experts, ``such a 
hastily constructed website''--and, of course, they had 3\1/2\ years--
``may not have been able to withstand the online demand last week.''
  Even the far-left Wonkblog at the Washington Post couldn't believe 
how badly the administration had failed. One of its columnists wrote:

       The Obama administration did itself--and the millions of 
     people who wanted to explore signing up--a terrible 
     disservice by building a Web site that, four days into 
     launch, is still unusable for most Americans.

  It wasn't supposed to happen this way. President Obama promised using 
the exchanges would be like, in his words, shopping on amazon.com. 
Well, Amazon can handle 13 or 14 million transactions every day with no 
problem. There are over 5,000 Web sites generating more traffic than 
healthcare.
gov.
  So how many people were able to successfully enroll in the health 
care exchanges on the first day? We have no idea. The administration 
doesn't want to talk about it. First, they said: We are thrilled so 
many people were checking out the Web site. By Sunday, Treasury 
Secretary Jack Lew was on multiple television shows refusing to answer 
questions about how many people had enrolled and just repeating the 
White House talking points. He claimed 4.7 million people had visited.
  If they are willing to tell us how many people have visited the Web 
site, why won't they tell us how many people actually got coverage?
  The administration says they won't provide any data to back up its 
claims until at least November.
  Remember, California claimed 5 million people visited their Web site 
for its own State exchange for the first day. They later had to back up 
and say that wasn't true. It turns out they had 645,000 visitors--less 
than 1 million, not the 5 million they claimed. That is a State that 
spent $313 million on their site and it couldn't handle even that many 
people, because they had trouble.
  President Obama said he was going to have the most transparent 
administration in history. The health care law is this administration's 
signature accomplishment. October 1 was the day they had been working 
toward for more than 3 years, and now the President won't tell the 
American people--won't tell any of us how many people have even signed 
up for health insurance. Why not? What is the President trying to hide?
  CNN looked into the 24 States that set up their own insurance 
exchanges under the law. They found that as of last Friday, about 
52,000 applications had been started. That is not how many people have 
actually completed their application successfully; it is just they have 
started. It is not how many people have gotten insurance; that is just 
how many people get to the point of starting their application.
  Even if the Obama administration fixes the technical problems with 
its health insurance Web site, it will not have fixed the many problems 
with its health care law. The law will still not give people the lower 
cost, high-quality care they wanted--which is the reason we needed 
health care reform in the first place. But I think the American people 
will hold the President to his promises and hold the Washington 
Democrats who voted for this law to their promises.
  The President, right before the exchanges opened, said coverage in 
the exchanges should cost less than your cell phone bill. He said you 
should be able to keep your doctor. And he said it would be as easy and 
secure as amazon.com. So far, the President's health care law has 
failed on all of these. That was exactly what many of us warned would 
happen.
  It doesn't matter if the ObamaCare exchange system failures happened 
because of heavy traffic or because of design flaws. The administration 
officials should be embarrassed, but they should not be surprised. 
Republicans warned the exchanges were not ready for prime time, but the 
President and Democrats ignored calls for a delay.
  Why is the administration insisting now on fining people--fining 
people who don't have insurance, even though they can't sign up on the 
Web site successfully? The President unilaterally gave big businesses a 
1-year delay in the employer mandate. Workers should get the same break 
that bosses get. If bosses get a 1-year delay in penalties, why 
shouldn't hard-working men and women all across the country get a 1-
year delay of the individual mandate?
  President Obama should have delayed the launch of his insurance 
exchange until it was ready. That would have been the fair thing to do. 
It is still the right thing to do. It is also the fair and right thing 
to give individual Americans the same delay of the mandate that the 
President has unilaterally--without the action of Congress--given to 
businesses all around this country.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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