Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017--Conference Report
Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, over the past several weeks, I spent a lot of time traveling around my home State of Wyoming. I know the Presiding Officer spent a lot of time traveling around his home State of Oklahoma. I talked to a lot of people in Wyoming, as he did in Oklahoma, about one of the top concerns of the things that are on their minds. To me, and I know to the Presiding Officer, that has been the Obama health care law and the disastrous problems that people are facing. People now tell me that some of them are paying more for their health insurance than they are for their mortgage. That is not just a problem in Oklahoma or in Wyoming; it is a problem all across the country. And that is now.
What they are also doing is reading stories in the papers, front-page stories that are saying the rates next year are going to go up again-- not just a little but a lot. I know that my Senate colleagues from all across the country--Republicans and Democrats--are hearing that because of the disastrous problems that the Obama health care law is currently experiencing. In Wyoming, the Obama health insurance exchange has only one company selling insurance--only one. Wyoming is not alone. This wasn't supposed to happen.
The Democrats in Congress who supported this health care law said that they were going to create more competition--bring down prices by lots of competition. I can still remember when the President gave a speech to Congress in 2009, and what did he tell us? He said that in 34 States, 75 percent of the insurance market was controlled by five or fewer companies--five or fewer. Now in Wyoming we are down to one.
The President said that without competition, the price of insurance goes up, and he said that the quality goes down. That is what President Obama said 7 years ago. He said that five options or fewer were such a threat to competition and to quality of care for American families that he needed to create his entire ObamaCare health care system.
What is the situation today? One-third of America will have only one ObamaCare insurer in 2017. The color-coded map from the Kaiser Family Foundation came out just last week, and it shows all these areas in orange have only one ObamaCare insurer selling insurance in their locations. I note that Oklahoma and Wyoming are all in orange.
Millions of Americans will have fewer choices in 2017 than they had in 2016, with one-third of the country having only one option for coverage next year. The Obama administration said that these were supposed to be competitive marketplaces. That is what President Obama said. When there is only one company selling a product in an area, that is not competition; that is a monopoly. The President ought to understand that, and so should every Democrat in this body.
What do the national newspapers have to say about it? The Wall Street Journal, front page story, last week, August 29: ``Health-Plan Choices Shrink.''
It says that in 31 percent of U.S. counties, insurance exchanges appear likely to offer consumers only one option. It is a monopoly. That is the Wall Street Journal. You go through the article and it will tell you 2.3 million people currently on ObamaCare will have one option for when they shop next year.
What are people expecting? They are expecting their insurance premiums to go up? When will they go up? November 1, a week before the election. When people start signing up for next year's insurance, they will see the incredible sticker shock and how that affects them. That is what competition looks like under President Obama. There is only one insurance company in all of those orange areas.
I see the minority leader left to go back to his office--the same office, behind closed doors, where the health care law was written.
He is from the State of Nevada. Let's look at the State of Nevada-- orange, orange, orange. All of those counties, other than this one area, have just one option because these very bright people--the architects of ObamaCare--wrote a health care law behind that closed door that says that one in three Americans will only have one ObamaCare insurer in 2017.
It was what we predicted on the floor of the Senate as this bill was being debated. President Obama said: No, you are all wrong. It doesn't matter whether it was the minority leader, who was then the majority leader. They obviously lost the majority as a result of the poor judgment of the Democrats, Nancy Pelosi saying that first you have to pass it before you get to find out what is in it, or others who said this is going to be wonderful.
This is what the American people are facing now. All the areas in blue have only two options to choose from. It is astonishing what has happened. When you are down to one choice, you basically have no choice. Except for the people in Pinal County, AZ--this area in red-- they actually have no choices. No one wants to sell ObamaCare insurance to the people who live there--none. It is an ObamaCare ghost town. The others may be ObamaCare wastelands or no man's land, but this is an ObamaCare ghost town.
What does President Obama say about that? It has gotten so bad in some places that State insurance commissioners have said that some of the ObamaCare exchanges are very near collapse. Does President Obama hear any of these things? Do the Senate Democrats hear any of these things? You would think they would if they go home and talk to people who live in their home States, but the insurance commissioner in Tennessee described the situation in her State as very near collapse.
Now, if you look at Tennessee on the map, there are actually some places where they have more than one choice, but the companies that are selling insurance are saying: We cannot do it; we cannot continue because of the losses that have been incurred by trying to comply with all of the rules and regulations of the Obama health care law.
The people in Tennessee who get ObamaCare insurance will be paying as much as 62 percent more starting in January. When they go to sign up on November 1, they will pay 62 percent more in January.
Our colleague from Tennessee, Senator Lamar Alexander, recently said that for a 40-year-old person who is a nonsmoker, lives in his home State of Tennessee, and buys the cheapest possible ObamaCare silver plan, comparing this year's plan to next year's plan, that same person is going to have to pay $852 more than they did this year--not $852 but $852 more than they did this year.
I talked to Senator Kirk, our colleague from Illinois, about that, and they will pay 45 percent more next year. Georgia will pay 33 percent more. These aren't just proposed increases. These are increases that have been approved by the insurance commissioner of those States.
It is interesting that when the Democrats come to the floor, they say: Well, they are only proposed increases that will never happen. These are the increases that have been approved by the insurance commissioners of each of those States. Premiums are going through the roof. Americans are stuck with fewer options because the insurance companies just can't afford to sell on the exchanges due to the rules, regulations, and mandates of the exchanges.
It is interesting to note that if you pick up a newspaper, you have to page all the way through to get to the stories. Here is the Washington Post, dated Sunday, August 28. The Presiding Officer can see it. It says: ``Health exchange sign-ups fall short.'' Well, if this is such a great deal, as the President says it is, why are the health exchange signups falling short? The American people know it is not a good deal. It is not a good deal for them personally. It goes on to say: ``Several firms opt-out citing losses.''
When you go through the whole article, it goes on to say that the ``Obama administration's promise''--promise of a menu of health care choices--``has been replaced by a grim forecast.'' Those are their words--``a grim forecast.'' This is the forecast right here on the map. This is what the country has gotten because of President Obama's plan and the demands by the Democrats that they take complete control of the health care in this country rather than leaving it in the hands of the men and women at home across the country who know what is best for them and their families. People living in one-third of the country won't have any choice next year. They will all have to deal with an ObamaCare health insurance monopoly and heading to ObamaCare no man's land.
Companies are giving up because people don't want ObamaCare insurance. People can't afford it, and they are not buying it. They say that for them it is not a good deal.
The Congressional Budget Office made some predictions. They predicted there would be about 24 million people signed up for ObamaCare by now. They made that prediction 1 year or so ago. The actual number is just 11 million. They overestimated by more than 2 to 1. From the very beginning, the health care law has failed to live up to the hype and to all the promises that Democrats and President Obama have made.
Remember when President Obama said: Under this law, if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance. If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance. That is what the President told the American people. One of the factfinders called it the lie of the year. But President Obama said: If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance.
Here is USA Today of August 30, and the front page says: ``Health care choices choked further.'' More than 2 million people could be bumped from insurance plans in 2017. More than 2 million people currently on ObamaCare could be bumped from their plans, and the President looked the American people in the eye and said: If you like what you have, you can keep it. That is what the American people are facing today. So one in three only have one insurer to choose from.
The situation is going to get worse. State insurance commissioners say things are very near collapse. What is the best thing the President can do and says about all of this? He says to the Democrats: Forcefully defend and be proud. Where are the proud defenders? Where are they today? Why aren't they here on the floor of the Senate defending this monstrosity that has hurt so many American people who had insurance? If you want to help people who didn't have insurance, you shouldn't have to hurt people who do have insurance. Yet I don't see the Democrats who are supposed to be proud and forcefully defending this law coming to the floor. I challenge them to come to the floor and debate me about this law and the impact it has had on the American people.
What does Hillary Clinton say? She is running for President. She says: Defend and improve. Why aren't her supporters here on the Senate floor defending it? These ideas have failed. The promises have gone up in smoke.
Do they have any solutions? Do they have any recommendations? The recommendations are more Washington control. That is what Zeke Emanuel said the other day on television. He is the architect who sat behind the closed doors over there and came up with this plan, along with the Senate minority leader and a number of the Senate Democrats. That is what he says--more Washington control, more taxpayer money, and bigger taxpayer funded subsidies. That is what they said.
Hillary Clinton talks about expanding the failing Medicaid Program. They want to hurt our seniors by cramming more people onto the Medicare Program, which is already headed for insolvency. Americans know that our health care system is in trouble. ObamaCare has failed. It is in the insurance death spiral, and Democrats cannot fix it by making it larger.
People in one-third of the counties in America won't have a choice for where they buy their health insurance starting November 1. America does have a choice when it comes to fixing our broken health care system. We can choose to get rid of ObamaCare and put solutions in place that we know actually will work for people--not for unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats but for people who we talked to in our home States over the August break. It means letting people get out from under the burden of all the Washington mandates. It is the mandates that are really the cause of these devastating price increases. We want to create real competition, not ObamaCare monopolies. We should let people choose the coverage and costs that are right for them and their families, not what Washington says is right for them.
When we are from a rural State such as Wyoming or from the Presiding Officer's State of Oklahoma, we know about rural medicine, we know about rural health care, we know about big distances, and we know what people need. The people there know a lot better than what people in Washington think they know about smalltown and rural America.
The Republicans in this body and Republicans all around the country are going to continue to fight. We will not stop fighting for the kinds of reform that get the power out of Washington and gives the power back to the States so people can have more control of the decisions that affect them, their lives, their communities, and their future. Democrats don't have any ideas other than higher subsidies, more government control, more one-size-fits-all for the failed policies of the past. These policies, I will tell the Presiding Officer, have failed. From the President's first speech, where he was condemning the fact that there were only four or five choices, to now, where you are looking at one, two, or zero choices, this points to the failure of the ObamaCare health care law.
It is time, as we get back here--and I hope that Democrats listened to people at home and heard their complaints--for Democrats to work with us and give the American people the health care they want, need, and deserve.
I thank the Presiding Officer.
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