[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9553-9554]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, last week, the Senate confirmed Sylvia 
Burwell as our new Secretary of Health and Human Services. She is now 
the administration's main implementer and representative of ObamaCare. 
She is its new face and will be its primary salesperson to the American 
people. I think the President made a competent choice, and I supported 
her confirmation. But I would be remiss if I did not mention or bring 
to light the difficult job she has ahead of her.
  From its botched website to ever increasing premiums, to canceled 
health insurance plans, ObamaCare has been and remains a complicated 
mess of broken promises and confusing implementation. I was back home 
in Indiana last weekend and the weekend before that, and ObamaCare, 
along with complaints about overregulation, remain the top two issues 
on people's minds. On Friday, I was in DeKalb County and Noble County 
up in northeast Indiana meeting with representatives of those two 
counties and communities and across the spectrum of people engaged in 
various business enterprises--housewives, small businesses, big 
businesses, elected officials, et cetera. In each of those discussions, 
as I went across those two counties, as I said, overregulation and 
ObamaCare were No. 1 and No. 2, or vice versa, on everyone's mind. It 
continues to remain on their minds because they see this as a very 
complicated and messy intrusion into their individual lives in terms of 
their ability to run their businesses. For many, it is not a question 
of ObamaCare not hurting them, but how it has hurt them and their 
concerns about how it is going to hurt them in the future.
  The President promised us that this plan--quote ``will lower the cost 
of health care for our families, our businesses, and our government.'' 
Let me repeat that. The President said that ObamaCare would lower the 
cost of health care--which it hasn't--for our families, our businesses, 
and our government.
  That is not what I have heard as I talk to people across the State of 
Indiana. What I hear from Hoosiers is their premiums have increased, 
they have higher health care costs, their deductibles have risen 
dramatically, their copays have risen, and they have fewer provider 
options. Remember what the President said: If you like your doctor or 
your health plan, you can keep it, period. That is not the case, and I 
hear that from hundreds of Hoosiers as I travel around the State.
  Let me speak about a specific story from a constituent, Jeremy, from 
Randolph County, who said this:

       My plan for my wife and two kids, ages 2 and 5, just 
     increased $150 to $615 per month. We cannot afford this 
     massive hike!

  He went on to say: Something must be done to lower these plans 
because

[[Page 9554]]

we are seriously going to think about not being able to have insurance 
for the first time since college because I simply can't afford it. It 
is unaffordable.
  The ACA, the so-called Affordable Care Act, has been called 
unaffordable by so many Hoosiers--and I suspect that is true all around 
the country--that it ought to be the unaffordable care act and not the 
Affordable Care Act.
  I don't know how many stories we have to bring to the floor of the 
Senate before my colleagues understand and realize this plan is faulty 
to the point that it needs to be replaced. It is deeply and fatally 
flawed at its very core.
  I know the majority leader came to the floor and said none of these 
stories we have related are true. That is like telling Jeremy he 
doesn't exist.
  I don't think he made this up: My plan for my wife and kids has just 
increased $150 a month to $615 a month. It is unaffordable. Americans 
across the country are repeating these stories. They are not made up. 
It is not something Republicans sit around and write in the back room 
and sends out that says: Here, say this, so we can repeat it on the 
floor of the House of Representatives or the Senate floor. These are 
concerned citizens sending by the thousands emails, phone calls, 
tweets, and any other means of communication. They are speaking to us 
directly when we go back home, whether I am in the grocery store buying 
a quart of milk, picking up a newspaper at the gas station, just 
speaking to people on the street, or when I sit down with business 
people. We have invited them to various small towns in Indiana. As I 
said, these stories that are coming from real people I represent--and 
they sent me here to represent them--is the impact of the health care 
plan that has been proposed by the President and now is being 
implemented. So all of the promises that were made early on--but it 
wasn't in force--have now been proven to be untrue.
  Don't just take my word for it. Look at the headlines. Reuters, which 
I don't think is an arm of the Republican Senatorial Committee or the 
Republican National Committee, and is an independent newspaper says: 
``U.S. says 2.2 million ObamaCare enrollees have data problems.''
  CNBC--the last time I heard, they weren't making contributions to the 
Republican Party either: ``Seven in 10 people say ObamaCare had bad or 
zero impact on U.S.'' Either nothing--no impact or bad impact--that is 
70 percent.
  Indianapolis Business Journal, to which I pay attention, and an 
independent organization: ``Indiana's ObamaCare rates for 2015 all over 
the map.''
  People can't figure out how much they are going to have to pay next 
year, but they have figured out one thing. It is going to be more than 
they paid last year.
  Remember the statement ``premiums won't go up?'' It won't go up a 
penny?
  I think many of us think it is time to start over and replace 
ObamaCare with real health care solutions. Republicans have offered a 
multitude of possibilities of suggestions and proposals, every one of 
which has been turned down by the President or not allowed to be 
brought to the floor by the Senate majority leader.
  There are those who say: What would you do? Why don't you suggest 
something? We have tried our very best to bring forward packages of 
reforms, to reach across the aisle and say, if you will work with us, 
we will try to fix some of these problems. We think we should repeal it 
and start over because we don't think it is the right model for health 
care, to address the solution of providing people in this country with 
adequate health care at a reasonable cost.
  So changing the face of ObamaCare by just putting in a new Secretary 
of Health and Human Services will not change this law's negative impact 
on Hoosiers such as Jeremy. I wish it would, but, obviously, it won't. 
It will not change this disaster of a law into what it should be: 
Better health care for all Americans. We are all committed to that 
goal, but we are simply saddled with a piece of legislation that was 
very poorly drafted, that was rushed through without any support or 
comments from those of us on the other side of the aisle.
  I wasn't here at the time. One of the reasons I ran and came back was 
to try to address what I thought was legislation taking us down a road 
to a dysfunctional health care system, with less quality, less access, 
less choice, less competition.
  Is there a need to reform this current health care system? Yes. Are 
there solutions that are better than what has been put before us? Yes. 
I wish we could summon the support and the will of those in this body 
to begin addressing that very problem.
  Mr. President, I see other colleagues on the floor, and I yield the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

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