[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 967-968]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         OBAMACARE REPLACEMENT

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Rhode Island for 
his courtesy.
  Last week, the Senate took the first step in providing needed relief 
for the American people from a health care plan, the Affordable Care 
Act, that overpromised and underdelivered. Many people are hurting now 
as a result of the failed promises of ObamaCare. They were told their 
premiums would go down, that they would be able to keep the policy they 
had if they liked it, and that if they liked their doctor, they could 
keep their doctor, none of which has proved to be true. So it is 
important that we keep our commitment to the American people. I believe 
we have gotten a mandate as a result of the election on November 8 that 
we keep our promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to deliver 
health care that is affordable and is a matter of individual choice and 
freedom of choice.
  The basic problem with ObamaCare is that it was command and control 
right out of Washington, DC, where people didn't have sufficient 
humility when it comes to rearranging one-sixth of our national economy 
and believed that they could, in the process of writing a 2,700-page 
bill--that I doubt many of them read--take over and improve our health 
care delivery system.
  It was sold on the basis of providing people access to affordable 
care, and in many instances, according to my constituents, they have 
seen their premiums skyrocket and deductibles skyrocket, effectively 
being insured but giving them no benefit of insurance coverage at all.
  I realize there were some things that people liked to talk about when 
they talk about ObamaCare that were positive; for example, dealing with 
people with preexisting conditions. I agree that people should not lose 
their health insurance coverage when they change employers and be 
caught in a trap where your insurance company doesn't cover your 
preexisting condition, but you don't need ObamaCare in order to deal 
with that problem. People also like the idea that single adults living 
at home can continue to be listed on their parents' health insurance up 
to age 26. That is enormously popular on a bipartisan basis. Again, we 
don't need a 2,700-page takeover of the health care system in order to 
deliver some of these consensus items of reform.
  I believe, and we believe, that there are certain principles that 
ought to govern the replacement of ObamaCare that we will see unfold in 
the coming weeks; first and foremost, moving the health care decisions 
outside of Washington and back to where they belong--to patients, 
families, and their doctor.
  We also believe patients ought to have more tools, such as health 
savings accounts which they can use to pay for their regular health 
care along with perhaps a catastrophic coverage which would help them 
in the event of an unexpected health care condition that would require 
hospitalization. If you are young and healthy and don't need all the 
money you set aside in health savings accounts, you can keep that money 
and use it for your eventual retirement.
  We also believe we ought to break down barriers that restrict choice 
and permit Americans to pick an insurance plan that is best for them 
and their family. One of the worst aspects of ObamaCare is that 
Washington, DC, said: Here is your health care coverage, and we are 
going to punish you with a penalty if you don't buy it, forcing people 
to buy coverage that they didn't want and didn't need--for example, a 
single male being forced, in essence, to buy maternity coverage. That 
is just 1 of the 10 essential health benefits that was mandated in 
ObamaCare that drove the cost of insurance through the roof, not to 
mention the fact that the pools of people who were insured tended to be 
older and less well, thus driving premiums again through the roof.
  Another principle that is really important to our health care reform 
replacement is empowering small businesses to provide employees with 
the kind of health care coverage that meets their needs through 
association health plans so they can pool their risks together to bring 
costs down and to increase their choices. We believe there ought to be 
flexibility on the part of the States when it comes to Medicaid 
spending. We ought to, in my book, give the States the money and the 
block grant and say: Come up with

[[Page 968]]

a health care delivery system for Medicaid's low-income citizens that 
best suits their needs. We haven't done that under ObamaCare. We have 
had a mandate and tied the hands of the States when it comes to coming 
up with alternatives to health care delivery.
  Finally, when it comes to employers that provide 61 percent of the 
health care coverage for Americans, rather than tying their hands and 
driving up costs, what we ought to do is allow for increased 
flexibility for employer-sponsored plans that will help bring down the 
costs. We hear our colleagues on the other side of the aisle talking 
about ObamaCare like it was the gold standard: There is nothing wrong 
with it. It is just perfect as it is.
  Well, I don't have to tell our Democratic friends about the 
unintended consequences of this partisan exercise. ObamaCare was passed 
without a single Republican vote so the problems that have developed 
from it are problems that were created by our Democratic colleagues. 
Having said that, we hope they will work with us to come up with an 
alternative which we believe would be an improvement on the status quo, 
to make health care more available, at a price people can afford, with 
choices that would be theirs, not a mandate out of Washington, DC.

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