[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Page 17463]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I remember a recent time when President 
Obama tried to spin Americans on ObamaCare. The best he could muster 
then was a condescending, sort of cringe-inducing message that likely 
turned off more people than it converted. He even said that Americans 
who already had health insurance ``may not know that they've got a 
better deal now [under ObamaCare] than they did, but they do.''
  As I said, it was condescending and cringe-inducing. It was so out of 
touch with the priorities of America's middle class.
  Well, it looks as though the President is going to try again today 
with a series of regional TV interviews. He will do so with headlines 
such as these as a backdrop: CBS, ``Affordable Care Act not so 
affordable''; AP, ``More than half of health law's insurance co-ops are 
closing.'' Here is a headline about the President's home State: ``Some 
Obamacare marketplace prices see double-digit jump in Illinois.'' And 
here is one about mine: ``Health co-op closes, 51,000 need new 
insurance.'' This is on top of the massive premium increases so many 
Kentuckians have faced.
  This isn't just a Kentucky story or an Illinois story. In every 
corner of the country, we see story after story about sharply rising 
premiums. The largest insurers in Tennessee have rates going up 36 
percent. A large insurer in Oklahoma is raising premiums by 35 percent. 
In Hawaii, families are looking at increases of 26 and 34 percent. It 
is easy to glaze over the numbers, but this is real money coming out of 
the pockets of real families. This is money that could help send a 
child to college or put Thanksgiving dinner on the table, but instead 
it will go to insurance bills made unnecessarily expensive in part 
because of ObamaCare's costly rules and regulations.
  Perhaps the President will settle today for trying to convince 
Americans that ObamaCare's Web site is at least working better than in 
years past, but that just means it will be a little easier for middle-
class families to pay more for unaffordable health insurance and higher 
out-of-pocket costs. That is hardly the makings of better headlines or 
better outcomes for the American people.

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