Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014 -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, earlier today the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, said there was a way to fix ObamaCare. She said: Change the name. She said: Change the name. That was her solution.

Now that is not something she just told a friend. It is something she told many, as she was participating in Politico's ``Lessons From Leaders'' events. Well, leaders don't blame the failure of a bad product on a name. You can blame it on a lot of things, but the name is not it. After all, the President said he was fond of the name ObamaCare. Apparently, Kathleen Sebelius is taking a page from the playbook of Professor Gruber about underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

This law isn't unpopular because it was named after the President. The law is unpopular because it doesn't work. It is unpopular because it doesn't deliver what the President promised the American people it would. So Democrats can rename this health care system whatever they want and people all across the country are still going to know that the law is failing them.

People have been hit by higher costs--higher copays, higher premiums, higher deductibles. Many of them can't continue to see the doctor who treated them in the past. So no matter what the Democrats and Kathleen Sebelius want to call it, the law remains very unpopular because it is unworkable and it is unaffordable.

As we head into the middle of December, next week, December 15, is the deadline for people to sign up on Healthcare.gov if they want to have their health insurance coverage starting next January--January 1--just a few weeks from now.

That is for people living in the 37 States that use the Federal health care exchange. A lot of people still haven't signed up, and they may learn over the next few days if they do go to the Web site to sign up that their health care and their insurance premiums are actually more expensive next year than they were this year. That is what people continue to see: Health care rates going up in spite of the President's promise.

When President Obama was selling his health care law to the American people, he promised them they would save money. He actually went so far as to say people would save $2,500 per year, per family, under his plan. And Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, actually went on ``Meet the Press'' and at one point said: Everyone's rates would go down. Everyone's rates, she said, would go down.

Well, that didn't happen. Now the Obama administration finally admits that people are paying more, not less. Americans buying health insurance through the Federal exchange will see their premiums go up and the administration finally admits it. And that is according to a new report by the Department of Health and Human Services which came out last Thursday.

Democrats said prices would go down, the President promised they would go down, and Nancy Pelosi said they would down for everyone. Instead, the prices keep going up.

Here is what one person in Syracuse, NY, wrote to his local newspaper last week. Lawrence Petty wrote to the Syracuse Post-Standard last Monday, December 1. He wrote that he has a plan he bought through the State ObamaCare exchange. This year, the cost was about $664 a month for the couple. Next year, going on the exchange, the rate for the same plan--the same plan, because the President said if you like your plan you can keep it--the same plan is going up from $664 a month to $773 a month. That is over $1,300 extra per year. Mr. Petty asked the newspaper in Syracuse, NY: ``So what gives?''

The average increase across the country is less than that, but this man in Syracuse, NY, is looking at a price hike of more than 17 percent. Every Democrat in the Senate voted for the President's health care law--every one of them. The Democratic Senator from New York voted for the health care law--the very State where this man is writing to his newspaper in Syracuse, NY. What do they have to say to this man in Syracuse whose insurance premiums are going up 17 percent next year? How do they respond to this man who is writing to the paper in New York asking ``what gives''?

Maybe his question has something to do with what the senior Senator from New York said a couple of weeks ago at the National Press Club, when he admitted that the health care law, in his words, ``wasn't the change we were hired to make.''

It is not just premiums. They are not the only problem here. The health care law has added so many Washington mandates, so many things people didn't want, can't afford, aren't interested in, don't need, that other costs have gone up as well. That includes the money people have to pay out of pocket for things such as copays, their deductibles. Some people have actually had to delay their medical care because of all these additional expenses. According to a new Gallup poll last month, 33 percent of Americans say that over the past year they have put off getting medical treatment because of the cost.

Gallup has been asking this same question all the way since 2001, well before the health care law was passed. And this year it is the highest number ever. This is after the President's health care law has been signed into law and has taken effect and the exchanges are in effect--the highest number ever of people not getting care because of the cost.

Two-thirds of these people say they have put off treatment for a serious condition. One of them is a woman named Patricia Wanderlich. She is 61 years old, and she works part time at a landscaping company outside of Chicago, in the President's home State. She told the New York Times that she has a small brain aneurysm that needs monitoring.

She tells her story in an article the New York Times published on October 17 under the headline ``Unable to Meet the Deductible Or the Doctor.'' Patricia has a health insurance plan through ObamaCare that has an annual deductible of $6,000, so she has to pay for most of her medical expenses up to that amount. Because of that, she says she is skipping this year's brain scan and hoping for the best. She says: ``A $6,000 deductible--that's just staggering.''

This is the kind of person ObamaCare was supposed to help. And changing the name of ObamaCare, as Kathleen Sebelius has recommended today, isn't going to solve the problems for this patient with the $6,000 deductible. She got the insurance, she got the coverage, but she still cannot get care, and that is a fundamental problem with this health care law.

The other thing this New York Times article points out is that people can't meet their deductibles, and they also can't meet their doctor. Patricia told the newspaper that if she switches to a policy with a lower deductible next year, she will get a smaller network of doctors, which means she will lose access to the specialists taking care of her.

A lot of people are finding that they are in the same situation--losing access to their doctors. Sometimes it is because the insurance has these narrow networks of health care providers. Sometimes it is just because the doctors are so overburdened that you can't get an appointment.

There was an Associated Press report that came out over the weekend, the title was: ``Health Law Impacts Primary Care Doc Shortage.'' We already knew there was a shortage of primary care doctors in the country, also a shortage of specialists, also a shortage of nurses. The President's health care law has made it worse.

The Associated Press article quoted an insurance agent in California named Anthony Halby, who says he has clients tell him that their ObamaCare plan made it extremely difficult for them to find primary care doctors. As he says, ``Coverage does not equal access.''

He is advising his clients to skip ObamaCare next year and pay more for insurance with a broader network so they can at least see the doctors they want, the doctors they choose, the doctors they need.

He tells people:

The premiums are going to be higher because there's no subsidy. However, I'm going to guarantee you can [actually] keep your doctor.

So people are finding they are paying more, when they were promised by President Obama, by the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that they would pay less. But she is the same one who said: First you have to pass it before you get to find out what is in it.

So people are having to put off care they need because Washington says they have to pay for things they don't want, they don't need, and they can't afford. People are finding out that coverage isn't the same as care, and millions of people are finding out they can't meet their deductible or their doctor.

That is not what the American people wanted from health care reform. People wanted access to the care they need, from a doctor they choose, at lower cost. That is what they wanted. Instead, what they got are all these new Washington mandates, all these new expenses, all these new problems.

What was the President's solution to that? He said: Put more people on Medicaid. He told Governors around the country to expand the Medicaid Program--make sure people have gotten on Medicaid.

We know that is a system that has been broken for a long time. The question we continue to ask is: Can somebody who has gotten a Medicaid card printed up and given to them or sent to them, can they actually see a doctor?

The Department of Health and Human Services says: Don't worry about that. What did the inspector general say this week? Yesterday in the New York Times: ``Half of Doctors Listed as Serving Medicaid Patients Are Unavailable, Investigation Finds.''

Who did the investigation? The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

So even though Health and Human Services says all of these doctors are available to take care of Medicaid patients, their own inspector general of the Department says not true--not true. Only half of the doctors listed as serving Medicaid patients are available.

This is what we are dealing with. That is why Republicans are going to vote to repeal the entire health care law. Meanwhile, we will also vote to strip away the worst and most destructive parts of the law: things such as the arbitrary 30-hour workweek which has been damaging to part-time workers across the country; things such as the unfair medical device tax that sends American jobs overseas, threatens lifesaving innovation.

The Republicans are going to talk about finally giving people choices. That is what people want with health care. They want choices. They want availability. They want affordability. That is what they are looking for--available, affordable care and choices, not more Washington mandates--and, finally, giving access to the health care people wanted all along.

Kathleen Sebelius may come out and give a lecture on lessons of leadership. Changing the name of this health care law from ObamaCare to anything else isn't going to make it any better for the people across this country who are finding out that the President's promises were empty promises; that they have been intentionally deceived as to the way this health care law was presented and passed, and now they find out their insurance is less affordable, their costs of care are going up, the availability of that care is going down, and they have lost their choices.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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