“Republicans will continue to come to the floor to offer the facts about how the health care law has harmed American families. We will continue to offer solutions that deliver the real reform people have been asking for all along.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor about how the President’s health care law is hurting millions of Americans. Barrasso also responded to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) recent comments about the law.
Excerpts of his remarks:
“I come to the floor today, because I noticed that the minority leader, the senator from Nevada, had some nice things to say about me on Monday in his remarks. He said that I was ‘relentless’ in my ‘condemnation of Obamacare.’ Those are his words.
“Well, I appreciate the minority leader’s kind remarks.
“Because he’s right – as a doctor I am relentless in my condemnation of the president’s health care law. A law that has done incredible harm to so many people all across this country.
“Now, Minority Leader Reid also said that he had the facts about the law.
“Most of those facts seemed to come from a New York Times opinion column by the renowned liberal icon Paul Krugman.
“So let me share some real facts with the minority leader.
“The insurance plans offered in the health care exchanges are so expensive, that they are a terrible deal for most Americans.
“That’s why the president had to give out subsidies to help hide the costs.
“The Congressional Budget Office says that Washington will spend $850 billion on those subsidies over the next decade. That is a fact.
“According to a new study by the health research company Avalere, Obamacare plans are extremely unpopular among people who don’t get the huge subsidies to buy the plans.
“Only two percent of the people who don’t qualify for subsidies have actually bought insurance through the exchanges.
“That’s a fact – and it’s an alarming sign of how high the cost of Obamacare really is. It’s not just the premiums that are sky high.
“This year, the average deductible, the deductible for an Obamacare silver plan is almost $3,000 for a single person – and more than $6,000 for a family.
“Now, that’s according to something called HealthPocket, which is a website that helps people compare insurance plans.
“That’s a fact – and $6,000 is a lot of money for a hard-working family to pay for their deductible.
“Now, the minority leader said that Paul Krugman’s opinions should be treated like facts, not as facts, but like facts, because, as Senator Reid said, ‘this isn’t some high school teacher talking about the merits of Obamacare.’
“Well, I agree on that point.
“High school teachers are far more likely to have had actual experience with the damages done by the Obama health care law, than has this New York Times columnist.
“That’s what we learned from a report on KMOX TV in St. Louis on April 23rd.
“Their report talked about the Parkway School District in Missouri. Remember it was Senator Reid who said ‘this isn’t some high school teacher.’
“Well this report, from St. Louis, said that Obamacare is forcing the school district to outsource the employment of substitute teachers.
“Why would they want to do that? Well it’s in the face of a $4 million penalty for not offering health insurance to the part-time teachers.
“That’s a fact – and those substitute teachers are real people who are being hurt by President Obama’s health care law.
“Here’s another fact reported by Politico on Monday afternoon.
“This was the headline April 27th, ‘Study: ACA exchange enrollees take tax hit.’
“According to a new study by the tax preparers at H&R Block, almost two-thirds of people enrolled in Obamacare exchanges had to pay back some of their subsidy with their taxes this month.
“The average amount people owed the IRS: $729.
“That’s a fact – and it’s a big hit to a lot of families who thought that they were going to get help to pay their Obamacare premiums.
“That doesn’t even count the people who decided that the insurance was just too expensive, and decided not to buy it.
“According to H&R Block, those people paid the IRS an average tax penalty of $178.
“That’s a fact – and it’s only going to be higher next year when people sit down and fill out their taxes then.
“Now, I remember another speech that Senator Reid gave on the floor about Obamacare.
“February 26, 2014, he said: ‘Despite all that good news, there’s plenty of horror stories being told.’
“He said, and, ‘all of them,’ he said ‘are untrue,’ that was Senator Reid a year ago.
“Republicans had been citing examples of people being harmed by Obamacare, and Senator Reid said that all of them were ‘stories made up from whole cloth.’
“Well, here’s a horror story from the minority leader’s home state newspaper in Nevada, very recently. This was an article earlier this month, Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 7th.
“The headline was: ‘Past state Obamacare sign-up glitches now haunt Nevadans at tax time.’
“Here’s what the article says, it says: ‘How did a Reno collections agent end up in collections himself?’ The answer, ‘he bought coverage in 2014 through the state’s health insurance exchange.’
“According to this article, ‘Rick Furst is still ironing out wrinkles in a plan purchased in May through the Nevada Health Link and its contractor, Xerox. His cascade of issues has included bad coverage dates, unpaid medical bills and an incorrect tax-credit form.’
“This man told the Las Vegas newspaper, ‘My credit was excellent, and now my credit is shot.’
“Does Senator Reid think that this man from his home state of Nevada made up his story out of whole cloth?
“People are having their lives turned upside down by the disgraceful failure of this Obamacare exchange.
“That’s a fact – and it is a cruel and costly side effect of this terrible health care law.
“Now, Paul Krugman, New York Times, he didn’t talk about that fact in his opinion column in the New York Times the other day.
“Another thing that he and the minority leader aren’t talking about is the fact that many Americans now have less access to actual care because of the health care law.
“Well they should have known about that fact.
“It was reported right there in the New York Times itself, Sunday, February 8, 2015, with a headline: ‘Insured but not covered, new policies have many Americans scrambling.’
“The article talked about the narrow networks many insurance plans had to create.
“This was to try to meet the requirements of Obamacare without the premiums going even higher.
“The story starts off by talking about one woman in New York City – her name is Karen Pineman.
“First, she lost her existing health insurance policy because it didn’t meet all of the mandates that President Obama said a health insurance policy had to include.
“Now, the president calls them, these benefits, ‘essential benefits.’ I call them ‘excessive benefits.’ It’s much more insurance than many people need, want or can afford.
“So the article, New York Times, says that she accepted that she’d have to pay a higher premium for a plan with a narrower network of providers, and no out-of-network coverage.
“According to the article, she also accepted the fact that she would have to pay out of pocket, pay out of her own pocket, to see her primary care physician, because her doctor wasn’t part of the narrow network that was now covered under her insurance.
“Well, she even accepted having co-pays of nearly $1,800 to put a cast put on her ankle after she broke it playing tennis.
“Finally, the article says, her frustration finally bubbled over when she tried to arrange a follow-up visit with her orthopedic surgeon.
“The nearest doctor available in her network who treated ankle problems was in Stamford, Connecticut. Now remember, she lives in New York City.
“This woman finally had enough, and she told the newspaper: ‘It’s ridiculous – didn’t they notice it was in another state?’
“Well, that woman that is reported in the New York Times did not make up her story out of whole cloth.
“Those kinds of narrow networks are a fact under President Obama’s law.
“It’s a fact that there are people who now have coverage, and can’t have access to care. And there is a difference between coverage and care.
“And you don’t have to take my word for it – it’s right there in the New York Times.
“So the minority leader is correct – Republicans have been relentless in condemning the horrifying costs of the president’s health care law.
“Republicans have been relentless in condemning the intolerable damage that the health care law has done to people’s access to health care.
“Republicans will continue to be relentless – because this health care law has been bad for patients, it’s been bad for providers, and it has been terrible for American taxpayers.
“Republicans will continue to come to the floor to offer the facts about how the health care law has harmed American families.
“We will continue to offer solutions that deliver the real reform people have been asking for all along: the care they need, from a doctor they choose, at lower costs.”
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