Healthcare
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would like to read a few quotes from some of my Democrat colleagues from the past couple of months.
This is from November 6:
We did fail to bring down the cost of healthcare.
This is from September 30:
Now, right now, we have a broken health care system. Nobody can afford health care.
This one is from December 3:
I think we all agree there's brokenness in the whole system.
Again, from December 3:
As much as we disagree on things, I just want to note the underlying agreement that this system needs a lot of reform.
Now, as I said, all of these are quotes from my Democrat colleagues in just the past couple of months. Every quote is an implicit admission that ObamaCare has failed.
Back in 2009, of course, Democrats were arguing that ObamaCare was going to fix healthcare. This is a quote from that time:
[A]n historic bill that will finally reform our broken health care system and help millions of our families and small businesses get the coverage they need at a price they can afford. It is about time.
That, again, was a senior Democrat Senator from back in 2009.
Or in the words of the Democrat leader:
Who would have thought that we could finally get a handle on the thing that is driving our budget deficit to great heights, which is health care costs, and at the same time do so much good by covering so many people?
Well, contrast that with the words of the Democrat leader today:
[T]he healthcare crisis is so deep and so real.
``The healthcare crisis is so deep and so real.'' In other words, Democrats' great scheme to fix healthcare--ObamaCare--has failed. So what are Democrats proposing to do this week? Introduce reforms? Perhaps try a different approach? Well, no. That would be wrong if you assumed that. They have announced plans to throw good money after bad. They proposed a clean, 3-year extension of the enhanced ObamaCare subsidies. ``Clean''--no reforms, no revisions, just billions of additional taxpayer dollars to prop up part of a program that has utterly failed to reduce healthcare costs.
Since 2013, premiums for ObamaCare enrollees have risen 221 percent-- 221 percent. In other words, this program is doing the very opposite of lowering healthcare costs. And as if soaring premiums weren't a big enough problem, the exchanges are rife with potential for waste, fraud, and abuse. A damning report from the Government Accountability Office released last week found that the exchanges continue to enroll fake individuals, are improperly paying out subsidies, and are failing to ensure payment accuracy, potentially putting taxpayers on the hook for millions or billions in improper payments.
So I might just show you. This is what the GAO found--the Government Accountability Office--and this just came out literally just this last week. This was a finding on their behalf--on their part: ObamaCare subsidies granted without documentation to 90 percent of fake accounts.
So what the Government Accountability Office did is they ran an audit of the exchanges in which these insurance policies change hands and found that 90 percent--90 percent--of these fake accounts were granted subsidies without documentation. Think about that. Ninety percent of these--this investigation--these accounts they checked--they created fake accounts to see if, in fact, they would get a government subsidy, and they did. There is a 90-percent failure rate in this program.
So we have spiraling healthcare costs, a program incredibly vulnerable--as is evidenced--vulnerable to fraud and abuse, and, again, Democrats are proposing that we do absolutely nothing--no reforms, no revisions, no safeguards; just billions more in taxpayer dollars.
Republicans have made it very clear that we would like to work with Democrats to address the affordability of healthcare and find solutions that actually reduce costs, but, as Democrats have made clear with this ``clean bill,'' they are not really after healthcare solutions. They seem to be OK with a 90-percent fraud rate. They are after a political issue to attempt to batter Republicans with during this next election year. If that means a proposal to throw more money at a program they know very well--very well--is failing--it is documented--then that is what they are going to go with.
I will quote again:
As much as we disagree on things, I just want to note the underlying agreement that this system needs a lot of reform.
Again, those are the words of a Democrat Senator, and she is right. The system does need reform--and a lot of it. It is too bad Democrats aren't interested in making any.
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