Health Care

Floor Speech

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I just returned from spending a weekend in my home State of Wyoming, traveling around the State and visiting with people in Natrona County and Casper as well as in Rock Springs, WY. I attended a marvelous event held every year in Sweetwater County called Cowboys Against Cancer. There were 700 people there to celebrate successes and remember those whom we have lost in these battles. I was there along with Senator Enzi as well as our Governor and others talking about an issue facing the Nation--an issue, of course, that is on everyone's mind--the health care law. This has been a very rough 5 weeks for hard-working Americans who are concerned about their health, and this obviously came up for significant discussion at the Cowboys Against Cancer event Saturday night in Wyoming.

Many people were hoping the Democrats' health care law would actually help decrease costs; that it would actually help increase access to quality health care. But all America knows that hasn't happened. On October 1, the Obama administration launched its health care exchange. This was to be the biggest moment of the President's signature achievement in office. It was one where people were looking forward to the opening of the exchanges, and it flopped. It completely flopped. The Web site crashed and fell right on the heads of the people who were already anxious about their health care. People all across the country saw this collapse, and even the late-night comedians have made a lot of jokes about the incompetence and the mismanagement of the Obama administration.

But I have to say the failure of the exchange is no laughing matter, because this is much more than a failed Web site. Real people are facing real health care problems and are being hurt because of this administration's failed health care law. Because of this law, millions of people are getting letters saying their insurance has been canceled. I talked to some of them this past weekend in Wyoming. There are at least 3 1/2 million people impacted by this across the country, and the number continues to climb every day. The Obama administration says that is no big deal. They say only 3 1/2 million people are losing the insurance plans they have now. But this administration's goal--their goal--was just 7 million people covered in the exchanges. So why does the White House think 3 1/2 million Americans losing their coverage is no big deal when their goal this year was to cover 7 million Americans?

President Obama and Democrats in Congress promised over and over: If you like your insurance, you can keep it. But that wasn't true. The Washington Post Fact Checker looked into the President's claim. These are the folks who decide if something is truthful or not truthful. They gave the President the full four Pinocchios for completely false claims.

The Fact Checker wrote:

The President's promise apparently came with a very large caveat: ``If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan--if we deem it to be adequate.''

Well, the President never said that. If the White House had been honest about people losing their health insurance, this law would never have passed. But the law did pass and people across the country are learning how much it is going to actually hurt them personally.

For millions of people who are losing the insurance they have, they are finding the options available under the Democrats' health care law much more limited and much more expensive. The rates are higher, the deductibles are higher, their copays are higher. It is not the kind of reform people wanted or needed, but that is what the Washington Democrats gave them.

The cost increases and the canceled insurance policies are just the beginning. A lot of people are now starting to realize they are no longer going to have access to their family's doctor. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. President Obama said this in 2009:

We will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.

That is what President Obama said. If the White House had been honest about how many families were going to lose access to their doctors, this health care law would never have passed. But the White House did make that promise, Democrats did pass that law, and American families all across the country are suffering as a result.

Coming back from Wyoming this morning I picked up USA Today. The editorial page of this newspaper supported the President's health care law, but their view today is:

Coverage cancellations belie Obama's promise. Obamacare is starting to resemble a patient bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. A month after launch, the online health exchanges where individuals are supposed to shop for insurance remain slow or unusable, except in states that opted to run their own marketplaces and did a more competent job than the administration.

States were more competent than the administration.

Continuing to quote the article:

As if that weren't trouble enough, critics are justifiably mocking President Obama for his repeated, untrue promise that if people liked their health plans, they could keep them.

The editorial on the opinion page of today's USA Today says:

Oops. Hundreds of thousands of people are getting termination notices from plans that don't meet the strict new requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Presumably, not all those people disliked their plans.

Referring to the President, they go on to say:

Now he can't seem to admit he overpromised and oversimplified. He and his aides compound their credibility problem by suggesting that people whose plans are being canceled ``just shop around in the new marketplace''--a laughable impossibility while HealthCare.gov is plagued by bugs.

So that is what I read in this morning's USA Today as I was coming back from Wyoming. Then I picked up the Wall Street Journal and turned to another column, and this is a guest column: ``You Also Can't Keep Your Doctor.''

You also can't keep your doctor. And there is a little subheadline that reads: ``I had great cancer doctors and health insurance. My plan was cancelled. Now I worry how long I'll live.''

I am sorry the Senate Chamber isn't full of all those people who voted for this health care law as this woman worries how long she will live. The Wall Street Journal says it is an absolutely devastating piece by one woman who is suffering because of the health care law. Her name is Edie Littlefield Sundby. She wrote about her experience fighting stage 4 gallbladder cancer. She had a health care plan with affordable access to good doctors who she points out saved her life.

As a doctor, I will tell you stage 4 gallbladder cancer has a very small chance of success and survival.

She has beaten the odds because of those taking care of her. But now she has been told that the plan she has is being canceled because of the President's health care law. Here is what she wrote:

What happened to the President's promise, you can keep your health plan? Or the promise that, you can keep your doctor? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician.

She has had some of the best physicians in the world--MD Anderson in Texas and California at Stanford, as well as in her home community of San Diego.

Washington Democrats knew their law would harm people such as Edie Littlefield Sundby who writes today in the Wall Street Journal. They knew that people like her all across the country would lose their insurance and lose their doctors. They just didn't want the American people to know it.

It was in the regulations that they wrote and they supported. The issue has to do with a section of the health care law that says that anyone who had an insurance policy on March 23, 2010, and continued to renew it, could keep it even after the ObamaCare exchange is launched. It is called a grandfather clause, and it is to protect people from the law's new rules and mandates--to let people, if they had something they liked, keep what they had.

But less than 3 months after the President signed his health care law, the administration issued a regulation setting very specific criteria these health plans had to meet in order to be grandfathered. The regulation dismantled the section of the law by placing unreasonably tight restrictions on grandfathered policies. Now, any routine change made to a grandfathered insurance plan immediately breaks the Democrats' promise that Americans can keep their health insurance.

A lot of consumers want the freedom and flexibility to increase their plan deductible, or copayments, rather than face a higher monthly premium. It is natural that people want to do it--with their health insurance, car insurance, or homeowners insurance. Looking and making decisions for you and your family is just part of being responsible. The Obama administration's regulations took away that choice.

Republicans saw this train wreck coming, and we tried to stop it. My colleague Senator Enzi from Wyoming in 2010 brought S.J. Res. 39 to this floor. This was a Resolution of Disapproval, which would have immediately overturned the administration's burdensome grandfather regulations.

What Senator Enzi brought to the floor for a vote of the entire body would have, if passed, allowed everyone to keep the insurance they had if they liked it--basically, to uphold the President's promise.

Republicans supported this resolution. Senate Democrats voted against it in lockstep. Absolutely every one of them said no. They kept the regulation on the books and made sure people would not be able to keep the insurance policy they had if they liked it.

Now Democrats don't want to hear about people like Edie with stage 4 gallbladder cancer. Republicans do want to hear about people like her--people who are losing their coverage because of this health care law. We want people to tell us their stories by tweeting with the hashtag ``YourStory.'' We want to make sure that nobody in the Obama administration forgets that these are real people and they have been hurt by this health care law which the President has continued to, on party lines, force down the throats of the American people in its passage, and then continue to deliberately deceive the American people with his quotes, not very long ago, and repeated so many times: If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.

Republicans support real health care reform. We support ideas such as allowing people to buy insurance across State lines. That would increase access to coverage and to care, not decrease it. That would increase competition and bring down prices--not raise them. But the Democrats' health care law is doing just that. That would be a reform that would help the American people. But the Obama health care law took the exact opposite approach.

Here is how Edie Littlefield Sundby put it in her story. She wrote:

Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines.

That should change. President Obama and Washington Democrats wanted a political win. They were willing to do anything and say anything--to say whatever they needed--to get that win, whether it was true or not. If they had been honest with the American people, they would have never gotten this law passed. But the Democrats' health care law today in America is hurting people, hurting families, hurting Americans. This must end.

The President should come to the table. He should work with Republicans to pass real reform, to help the American people who have been hurt and continue to be hurt by his health care law.

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

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