[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 11280]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. McCONNELL. First, a few observations about ObamaCare. It may not 
have existed in the English language a few years ago, but in short 
order it has become a battle word for broken promises and almost 
cartoonish inefficiency. It is no wonder why: You can keep your plan. 
You can keep your doctor. Premiums will go down. The law will create 
millions of jobs.
  We knew the promises wouldn't hold up. Many of us said so. One even 
earned the dubious distinction of being declared the ``lie of the 
year.'' And that is why it is so hard to trust much of what the Obama 
administration claims about ObamaCare these days, such as back in 
December when administration officials issued another promise--that 
they would make sure any taxpayer-funded ObamaCare subsidies would go 
only to enrollees who actually qualify for them under the law.
  We wanted this assurance not only because so many other promises had 
been broken; we wanted it because eligibility verification is so 
important. Middle-class taxpayers are feeling enough pain from this law 
already. They shouldn't have to subsidize inaccurate or even fraudulent 
ObamaCare claims on top of all the rest. So I helped pass a law that 
requires a nonpartisan watchdog to keep an eye on the procedures the 
administration claimed would protect taxpayers to see how they will 
work and then report back to us in Congress.
  Last week that watchdog, the inspector general, issued the first two 
reports on the issue, and it turns out we were pretty correct to be 
worried. The inspector general concluded that the administration was 
often ineffective at verifying such basic details about ObamaCare 
enrollees as their citizen status, their income, their Social Security 
number, and whether they were even eligible to purchase ObamaCare in 
the first place. The administration, the IG reported, didn't even 
follow its own eligibility verification procedures in many cases.
  And that wasn't all. The IG also discovered nearly 3 million 
inconsistencies in the information ObamaCare enrollees provided in 
their applications, nearly 90 percent of which couldn't even be 
resolved because the necessary software--the necessary software--wasn't 
even operational.
  It is completely ridiculous.
  And the administration is still struggling to get a handle on the 
problem. Computer systems that should have been ready to go last 
October have not been built yet. It is the kind of scenario we would 
expect to see in a Leslie Nielsen movie, not in real life.
  Worse still, administration officials are now indicating they are 
going to keep chugging ahead with their deeply flawed verification 
practices, even after everything the government's own watchdog 
uncovered. Many individuals enrolled with the current flawed enrollment 
process will automatically be enrolled for the same taxpayer subsidies 
next year.
  They are defiant--defiant--in the face of all of this. This is 
precisely the kind of flippant attitude that is so infuriating to many 
of our constituents.
  Many of us predicted these kinds of problems would be the likely 
outcome of giving government such expansive power over a huge segment 
of our economy. Of course we are going to have massive inefficiency and 
probable fraud and migraines for middle-class families who already have 
enough to deal with. Of course we are going to see all this. It seems 
inevitable.
  That is why Republicans say we need to start over with actual health 
care reform--reform that can actually lower costs and increase the 
quality of care without resorting to this tired sort of government-
centric approach.
  ObamaCare is built upon the intellectually lazy idea that we can 
simply legislate a desirable outcome into existence, that we can tell a 
hulking Federal bureaucracy to simply bureaucratize affordable health 
care into being. Unfortunately, life does not work that way. Reality 
always intervenes, as we have been seeing with the pain of ObamaCare 
these past few years--pain that will only continue until Washington 
Democrats join us to enact a serious bipartisan solution that actually 
addresses many of our health care challenges and dispenses with the 
failed policies of this administration. Yet that is exactly the 
opposite of what we have seen from our friends on the other side so 
far.
  Instead of working with us to solve massive problems, such as the 
ones the inspector general identified, Democrats in Washington are 
simply hiding from the issue altogether. They are trying to change the 
subject. Even hinting at it prompts the Democratic majority to shut 
down the legislative process altogether and cancel committee markups. 
They block votes and amendments. They will not allow the Senate to 
consider numerous bipartisan House-passed bills that would address some 
of ObamaCare's most glaring problems.
  Even when a bipartisan group proposes a plan to address a flaw in the 
law that is reducing incomes for working families, they reject it. 
Instead, they schedule show votes designed to inflame one group or 
another.
  As for the President, he is traveling around the country this week to 
give campaign speeches--not working with Congress to help middle-class 
families struggling under the weight of his policies. So the Democratic 
plan seems to be to double down on the mess they created and to hope 
Americans can be distracted enough to forget about it come November.
  If that is the plan, it is not going to work. Middle-class Americans 
know who has been standing by their side throughout this entire 
ObamaCare fiasco. They know who has been standing against them, serving 
as a shield for the President and the hard left.
  It is not too late for Democrats in Washington to work with 
Republicans to address the massive problem they created. If they truly 
care about the millions they have already hurt in this country with 
this law, it is time to do just that.

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