[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2248-2249]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            PATIENT CARE ACT

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, last week I joined my colleague Senator 
Burr in unveiling the latest version of our legislative proposal to 
repeal and replace the so-called Affordable Care Act. We are joined 
this time around by our friend in the House, Chairman Upton of the 
House Energy and Commerce Committee.
  We call our proposal the Patient Choice, Affordability, 
Responsibility, and Empowerment Act, or the Patient CARE Act for short. 
As you may recall, we first unveiled this framework last year and in 
general it received high marks for being a serious, responsible 
alternative to ObamaCare. We have unveiled the latest version of the 
proposal in hopes of continuing the conversation we began in the last 
Congress.
  Let's face it. ObamaCare isn't working. It is not working. Sure, its 
proponents in the Senate and elsewhere have gotten pretty good at 
cherry-picking data in order to convince the American people that the 
President's health care law is a success. But the American people know 
the truth. The law is a disaster for individuals, families, and 
employers alike.
  Despite the claims that ObamaCare would lower health care costs, 
costs have continued to skyrocket. Due to all the mandates in the law, 
businesses are slowing hiring and moving employees into part-time work. 
Of course, the law includes more than a trillion dollars in new taxes 
that impact consumers and businesses around the country. We need a 
better path forward and a long-term vision for sustainable health care 
reform.
  I want to take just a few minutes today to talk about the approach we 
want to take with the Patient CARE Act and why it is a better approach 
than the one being taken under ObamaCare. Our plan rests on four simple 
principles. First, repeal ObamaCare with all its costly mandates, 
taxes, and regulations. Second, reduce costs by taking the government 
out of the equation and instead empowering consumers to make choices 
about their own health care. Third, provide common sense consumer 
protections, including protections for individuals with preexisting 
conditions. And fourth, reform our broken Medicaid system by giving 
States more flexibility to provide the best coverage for their 
citizens.
  Let me talk about each of these principles in a little more detail. 
For any health care proposal to have a chance of success, it must get 
rid of ObamaCare. The failures of ObamaCare have been well documented 
here on the Senate floor and elsewhere. The American people deal with 
those failures on a daily basis. That is why the first principle of our 
proposal is to repeal ObamaCare once and for all. Then we move on to 
address the biggest barrier to health care in this country--
skyrocketing costs.
  Our plan would give taxpayers affordable options to meet their health 
care needs by harnessing the power of the marketplace--not through 
Federal Government mandates. With more options in the private insurance 
marketplace, people will be better able to find insurance that meets 
their needs. The lack of choice and draconian coverage mandates is one 
of ObamaCare's largest shortcomings. Our proposal would allow consumers 
to find affordable plans that address their particular needs without 
making them pay for coverage they will never use or want.
  Our proposal would also give States more options to provide people 
with more coverage. Under our plan families earning up to 300 percent 
of the Federal poverty level would be eligible for a tax credit to 
purchase insurance of their choosing. In addition, our plan would help 
small businesses enjoy the same advantages in the marketplace as large 
businesses by allowing them to band together to leverage their 
purchasing power to buy insurance for their employees.
  The Patient CARE Act also proposes an expansion of the health savings 
accounts so that people can plan and save for their future medical 
needs. Under our plan, for the first time consumers would be able to 
use their pretax dollars to pay premiums and deductibles. Our proposal 
would inject more transparency into health care costs so people can 
know what their providers are charging and how successful they are.
  In addition, we include other cost-saving measures such as medical 
malpractice liability reform to help reduce the expensive practice of 
unnecessary defensive medicine.

[[Page 2249]]

  Our plan would reduce the distortions in the Tax Code that actually 
increase the cost of health care in our country by capping the 
unlimited employee exclusion. This is a key way of restraining costs 
that has support across the political and economic spectrum.
  In our proposal the exclusion is capped at a generous $30,000 for a 
family plan, and that threshold will continue to grow at CPI plus one. 
Most importantly, we make sure we preserve the employer-sponsored 
health care system for those 160 million Americans who rely on it by 
leaving the employer deduction untouched and by repealing the job-
killing employer mandate. By increasing consumer choice and utilizing 
the power of the market, our proposal will actually reduce health care 
costs, something ObamaCare has miserably failed to do.
  Our plan also includes a number of commonsense consumer protections. 
For example, we would make sure a person would not see their coverage 
get canceled if they get sick. Our plan would also ensure that people 
with preexisting conditions could not be denied access to health 
insurance. Period.
  I will repeat that for my friends on the other side, who were 
confused about this in some of their speeches: No American with a 
preexisting condition can be denied coverage under our plan. End of 
story.
  We would also let children stay on their parents' plans through age 
26 and prevent insurers from putting caps on total benefits paid out 
over a person's lifetime so that no patient will have to worry about 
maxing out their coverage.
  Finally, our plan would address the current failings of the Medicaid 
Program. Keep in mind, many of the newly insured people credited to 
ObamaCare have obtained their coverage through the expansion of 
Medicaid. Of course, this is absurd as Medicaid is a financially 
unsound program that continues to swallow up State budgets on a yearly 
basis. ObamaCare did not improve the stability of Medicaid, it only 
threatened it further.
  The Patient CARE Act includes a key reform that is similar to the 
Medicaid modernization plan that Chairman Upton and I proposed in the 
last Congress.
  Currently, Federal taxpayers have an open-ended liability to match 
State Medicaid spending, which is a significant driver in Medicaid's 
budgetary challenges. Our proposal would create per capita spending 
caps--something President Clinton, and many Democrats who remain in 
this Chamber, supported in the past.
  We would couple this structural reform to Medicaid with new 
flexibility for States to manage their Medicaid populations. On top of 
that, we would give those on Medicaid the option of purchasing private 
health insurance, which is more frequently accepted by quality doctors.
  I hope you are grasping a pattern when it comes to this proposal. At 
virtually every step, our aim with this proposal is to take the Federal 
Government out of the equation and put individuals and families in 
charge of making their own health care decisions. We trust the American 
people to make the best choices for themselves.
  The Patient CARE Act represents a sustainable and achievable 
alternative to ObamaCare, one that will succeed without the tax hikes, 
the mandates, and the outrageous government spending that came part and 
parcel with the Affordable Care Act. Most importantly, it will actually 
reduce the cost of health care in this country.
  Once again, our hope with unveiling the latest version of this 
framework is that we can continue the conversation about improving 
health care for individuals and families. I have given just a top-line, 
35,000-foot overview of the proposal here today. I want to invite my 
colleagues to take a look at our ideas and give us your feedback. I 
hope health care experts around the country will continue to do the 
same.
  Unlike ObamaCare, this is a product that will rely on consensus and 
feedback. We have more work to do. It is important, and I look forward 
to more discussions and conversations about these issues.

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