[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18921-18922]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, shortly we will be getting on a bill to 
repeal ObamaCare. It comes as a part of the budget operation. It is a 
special debate that can result in the passage of a bill with 51 votes 
in the Senate. There will be a limit on the debate of 20 hours--10 
hours for each side--to convey any messages that Senators may have 
about the bill and also to handle any amendments. At the end of the 
process there could be another vote-arama if there are a lot of 
amendments left over. This is an amendable bill. It has quite a few 
rules that fall under the budget process that make this a bit more 
difficult than just a wide-open bill, so there are rules that have to 
be met in order for an amendment to not affect the outcome of the bill.
  Many of you have heard of the expression, I am sure, ``caveat 
emptor,'' which means buyer beware. The President and the Democrats in 
Congress should have heeded this warning before forcing the country to 
purchase ObamaCare, which still remains unworkable, unaffordable, and 
more unpopular than ever. For millions of Americans the law today 
represents nothing more than broken promises, higher costs, and fewer 
choices.
  It is no surprise that a Gallup poll published last month, more than 
5 years after the law was passed and several years into actual 
implementation, shows that most Americans still oppose this 
unprecedented expansion of government intrusion into health care 
decisions for hard-working families and small businesses. Another poll 
I found interesting showed that more people were concerned about what 
has happened with health care than they do about climate change. That 
is appropriate for this week.
  The law is saddling American households with more than $1 trillion in 
new taxes over the next 10 years. According to the Congressional Budget 
Office, ObamaCare will cost taxpayers more than $116 billion a year. In 
fact, on average, every American household can expect more than $20,000 
in new taxes over the next 10 years because of this bill. ObamaCare's 
crushing regulations mean smaller paychecks for families while holding 
back small businesses from expanding and hiring new workers. For every 
American, ObamaCare has meant more government, more bureaucracy, and 
more rules and regulations, along with soaring health care costs and 
less access to care.
  When we were debating this bill 5 years ago, I remember talking about 
30 million people in the United States being uninsured. Today there are 
30 million people in the United States uninsured, it is just a 
different 30 million people. The ones who couldn't be insured are 
insured and the ones who were insured can't afford the insurance. Of 
course, there was a lot of talk about health care companies gouging the 
insured. We put in risk corridors so those who were making an excess 
profit would put in money that would go to those who didn't figure on 
the right number of people or how healthy the people would be who they 
insured. We now know that didn't work. The amount of money that went 
into the fund was rather insignificant, so those who undercharged 
aren't getting much and companies are going out of business.
  Today we take a crucial step forward in beginning to lift the burdens 
and the higher cost of this law that has been placed on all Americans. 
As I mentioned, this is a special budget operation that only requires 
51 votes. The House has already passed a bill with more than a 
significant majority.
  By the time we are done, the legislation the Senate passes will 
eliminate more than $1 trillion in tax increases placed on the American 
people while saving more than $500 billion in spending. Most 
importantly, this bill begins to build a bridge from the President's 
broken promises to a better health care system for hard-working 
families across the country.
  Let's talk about the broken promises. As a Presidential candidate, 
then-Senator Obama promised Americans they could keep their health plan 
if they liked it. When he was in office and the bill was there, he 
said: If you like your plan, you can keep it. Millions soon learned 
they can't. This is because ObamaCare has drastically reduced America's 
choice among health care plans through a Federal Government takeover of 
the insurance marketplace. In fact, the President's promise, ``If you 
like your plan, you can keep it,'' was named PolitiFact's ``Lie of the 
Year'' in 2013 after the health care plan cancellations were mailed to 
over 4 million Americans.
  Let's talk about the higher costs. Americans were also promised lower 
health care costs, but even the administration admits ObamaCare is 
failing to address costs and said average premiums are expected to rise 
by 7.5 percent this year. Recent headlines from across the country 
actually show much more dramatic increases.
  In Minnesota insurance policies on the exchange have rate hikes in 
the double digits--between 14 and 49 percent. In Oregon premiums for 
the benchmark plan on the exchange will go up about 23 percent. In 
Alaska the premium hike will be more than 31 percent for the benchmark 
plan. In Oklahoma the second lowest cost silver plan premiums will 
increase more than 35 percent. In Utah plans on the federally run 
exchange will be 22 percent higher next year.
  The President of the United States himself promised that this bill 
was not a tax. In fact, this was one of the law's top selling points 
because Democrats knew it would never pass if they said it was a tax, 
but while they got the bill passed and signed into law, the Supreme 
Court later ruled it is a tax. This law was deceptively sold to the 
American people and now these hidden taxes are being passed on to hard-
working families in the form of higher fees and costs. It is time for 
Democrats in Congress and the President to admit that ObamaCare is a $1 
trillion tax hike that families and employers simply can't afford.
  We can talk about fewer choices. ObamaCare's mandates and taxes on 
employer-sponsored health care plans are not only leading to higher 
out-of-pocket expenses but also fewer choices and services for 150 
million Americans who have relied upon job-based health benefits for 
decades. It eliminated some of the competition, and competition is the 
real way to bring down prices.
  I remember when we did Medicare Part D. I was a little concerned 
because there were only two companies that were providing the 
pharmaceutical benefit in Wyoming, and I thought they would maybe drop 
out of the program, but Medicare Part D increased competition. What did 
increased competition do? It brought down the price of the 
pharmaceuticals by 25 percent before it even went into effect.
  ObamaCare didn't provide for more competition. According to the 
nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, employees who have job-based 
insurance have witnessed their out-of-pocket expenses, on average for 
an individual, climb from $900 in 2010 to $1,300 in 2015. Employees 
working for small businesses now have deductibles of over $1,800. Since 
ObamaCare became law, several large employers have stopped offering 
benefits to part-time employees, including Walmart, Target, Home Depot, 
and Trader Joe's. The premiums have gone up and the deductibles have 
gone up. There are fewer choices and higher costs.

[[Page 18922]]

  So this was supposed to build a bridge to better care. Over the past 
50 years, our Nation has made great strides in improving the quality of 
life for all Americans, but these transformative changes were always 
forged in the spirit of bipartisan compromise and cooperation. These 
qualities are essential to the success and longevity of crucial 
programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
  Shortly before he retired in 2001, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a 
Democrat from New York, said:

       Never pass legislation that affects most Americans without 
     real bipartisan support. It opens the doors to all kinds of 
     political trouble.

  Senator Moynihan correctly noted that the side that didn't support 
the law will focus on each and every misstep. More importantly, he 
predicted that the measure's very legitimacy would always be in doubt 
and that the majority of Americans would have trouble supporting it in 
the long run unless it unquestionably achieved all of its goals.
  We have seen each of these scenarios play out over the past 5 years 
as the health care law has polarized America like nothing before.
  Bipartisan support, of course, means that both sides get some things 
into the mix of the bill. That did not happen even though we had a very 
extensive amendment process in committee and on the floor. Essentially, 
the Republican ideas were all thrown out. Both sides weren't included, 
so it was not a bipartisan bill.
  After passage of the bill, we had a special time at the Blair House 
where there were half Republicans and half Democrats who got to speak 
with the President for a day. The amazing thing at that meeting was 
that every time a Republican mentioned an idea, the President blasted 
it immediately. When the Democrats suggested an idea, those were all 
good. At the end of the day, it turned out to be very much a waste of 
time because not a single idea was even considered that was brought up 
at that time by the Republicans.
  We still need health care reform, but it has to be done the right 
way--not comprehensive. In my opinion, ``comprehensive'' means so large 
that nobody can understand it, and that is kind of what happened with 
this bill. We have to do it step by step. They can be pretty big steps, 
but if we do it step by step, we can bring the American public along. 
They can understand it, and they can tell us the unintended 
consequences, and those can be fixed. It would be correctable. This 
bill hasn't been correctable. We have known the flaws. The President 
has put waivers on to keep us from noticing them sooner. We have 
offered to make corrections but have never been taken up on our offer.
  Providing access to high-quality, affordable health care is something 
I am confident that Democrats and Republicans should be able to do. It 
is time to build a bridge from the broken promises to better health 
care for each and every American once and for all.

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