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Floor Speech
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Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. President, healthcare is in a crisis. What Republicans want to do is put patients in charge, not insurance companies. But the first thing we need to do to fix ObamaCare is to address the fraud in ObamaCare. If we can't agree on this, I don't know how we can possibly begin to fix ObamaCare.
I refer everyone to the recent week's Government Accounting Office report. They show people enrolled without consent, subsidies flowing from the Federal Government to insurance companies from people who don't even know they are enrolled in ObamaCare. They show that there were toddlers enrolled in ObamaCare. They demonstrated 58,000 dead people who were enrolled in ObamaCare, each of them having premiums sent to insurance companies on their dead body's behalf for some 9 months on average. We saw one Social Security number being used over and over again.
In fact, over a third of the people on ObamaCare didn't file a claim. Now, I am not saying that all those people are fraudulent. In a group of otherwise healthy folks, maybe 20 percent of people don't file a claim. But from 2021 to 2024, we saw that the number of people not filing a claim went from 19 percent to 35 percent, and that is when the enhanced subsidies kicked in, and therefore many people had zero premiums, so the Federal Government was paying their entire premium.
Again, we think that this report demonstrates billions of dollars of fraud, very often estimated at some $25 billion. That is why we introduced our bill, S. 3380, the ACA Marketplace Integrity Act, to stop the fraud. Who could be against that? Who could be against stopping the fraud?
Our solution--I think it is pretty simple.
First of all, mandatory identification verification for enrollment. Look, you can't get on an airplane, you can't get a hotel room, you can't rent a car without an ID. So let's verify identification. That is going to help decrease the fraud.
Secondly, we are asking for a minimal monthly payment from everybody involved in ObamaCare. We are asking for $5--the cost of a Big Mac, maybe a Big Mac meal. For $5--we are asking people to contribute to their own healthcare insurance, and we don't think that is too much to ask.
How is that going to prevent fraud? Well, look, if you are seeing $5 taken out of your paycheck or your bank account or charged to your debit card every month, you are going to sit there and say: Huh, where is that coming from? And if you contact the person where that debit is going to, then you are going to find out, oh, it is an insurance company.
I know we have all had something similar to that happen to us where we signed up for some type of streaming service years ago, and you can't get it off your credit card, but it just keeps recurring.
So what we are asking for is a minimum monthly payment of $5 from everybody on ObamaCare.
Now, my friends across the aisle are going to say that eliminating the zero-dollar premium will prevent people from getting a plan and that it is a trap to dismantle the ACA.
Look, I am not trying to dismantle the ACA; I am trying to fix it. I am trying to fix it for the folks who have seen their premiums more than double, people whose deductibles went from $1,000 a year to $15,000 a year. Why would we want those fraud dollars going to the insurance companies of all things? Let's take that same money and fund healthcare savings accounts.
Now, the next point we do with our bill is we codify President Trump's integrity rule to strengthen verification. I think that just these simple tests, these simple solutions, will decrease the fraud.
I think what consumers need to realize is that, just like shoplifting--even though the day you are there shopping, someone shoplifting doesn't impact the price of what you are buying, eventually it does. So this shoplifting, this fraud that is going on where we are taking good, hard-earned taxpayer money and sending it to insurance companies, is driving up the cost of healthcare for everybody, and every wasted dollar skips the real care that is needed.
I don't know why my Democrat friends want to prioritize insurance companies over real people and shrug their shoulders at fraud by fighting subsidy cuts.
What we as Republicans demand is honesty, accountability, transparency, and then we are going to redirect these subsidies. Let's redirect the subsidies, empowering patients over insurance companies-- again, all with transparent services. But we have to start with anti- fraud. If we can't agree to stop funding imaginary enrollees, what can we agree on? If it is not our plan, then what is the Democrats' plan? Show us a plan that fights fraud.
In Kansas and in every State of this Union, resources are blessings. It is Christmastime. It is a time to remember other people. I truly want every person in America to have meaningful, affordable access to healthcare, and the Republican plan does that. But we have to start by stopping the fraud.
Let's not waste hard-earned taxpayer dollars. Let's stop throwing good money after bad money.
This bill will stop the fraud. It is going to prioritize patients. And I urge every Member of the Senate to help us immediately stop the fraud.
3380 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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