“Enroll America is telling everybody to sign up for health insurance, but they aren’t admitting that the law picked who wins and who loses.”
Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso’s speech.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) discussed the White House’s attempt to sell the President’s unpopular health care law through a new interest group called “Enroll America.”
Excerpts of his remarks:
“This week, President Obama and his allies are launching a big summer push to convince people that his health care law will not be a train wreck.
“Now, we’ve heard in the Senate from one of the authors of the health care law that he saw a train wreck coming, so now what we see the Obama Administration trying to actually sell the bill.
“Not that it’s good or bad; just trying to sell it in any way they can to make the American people think about it in ways that may change their mind, because the American people know this is a health care law that’s not really doing what they wanted, which is what they were looking for, was trying to get the care they need from a doctor that they wanted at lower cost.
“Well, I believe, Mr. President, it’s going to be a tough sell. A new poll out earlier this month showed that only 37% of Americans think that the health care law is a good idea. Well, that’s even fewer people than think it was a good idea when the law was passed three years ago.
“Now remember, the Democrats promised the American people that, well, the law would be actually overwhelmingly popular by now. Well, there’s nothing further from the truth because this law is more unpopular now than it was when it was passed.
“Now we see the President of the United States pulling out all the stops trying to sell this horribly written law, a law that’s bad for patients, it’s bad for providers and nurses and doctors who take care of those patients, and it’s going to be terrible for the American taxpayers.
“So what the President is doing is joining a new group, a new interest group. The group is called Enroll America. Well, this is a group, and who’s running it?
“Former Obama Administration officials moved from the White House to this group trying to sell this health care law. This is the group that, part of what we’ve known as the ‘Sebelius shakedown’, the efforts by the Secretary of Health and Human Services who was asking health care businesses to donate to this organization.
“This group started rolling out a PR Campaign trying to convince people to sign up for insurance under the President’s health care law.
“I agree more people need insurance, but we have to make sure that the people not just have insurance but get good care. That is what this is supposed to be all about. The President keeps talking about more coverage. What we need is care for people, not just more coverage.
“So you take a look at that and say is it actually going to work? And according to this article in this morning’s ‘Washington Post,’ it talks about the president of this group Enroll America, former White House staffer, who said yesterday in a telephone interview that, she said the group’s research shows 78% of uninsured people don’t know about the changes coming in January.
“So, you have to say what kind of insurance are people going to be able to sign up for? What are they going to get to choose from? What choices will they have? What will they find in the exchange? And, by the way, the exchanges are running way behind time.
“First of all, for a lot of people in terms of trying to sign up on the exchanges, what they’re
going to find, it’s going to be a lot more expensive than it would have been for them if this health care law had never passed in the first place.
“Remember the President said that policies would actually be $2,500 cheaper by the end of his first term and now we’re seeing policies a lot more expensive not just by what the President promised, even more expensive than they would have been had the law never passed in the first place.
“Here’s an editorial from the Racine, Wisconsin ‘Journal Times,’ they wrote, ‘despite assurances from the Democrats that the health care plan will drive down health care costs the evidence is increasingly telling the opposite tale.’
“This is Wisconsin. This is a state which recently elected a Democrat to the United States Senate, a state that went for the President.
“Here’s another headline that Enroll America won’t be talking about when they try to cite the President’s health care law. This is from the McClatchy News on Tuesday. The article is entitled ‘Obamacare’s big question: what’s it going to cost me?’
“That’s what people want to know. That’s why folks were interested in the health care law in the first place, because they were paying too much for health care and they needed to look for care that was actually more affordable for them, right for them.
“Either way, insurance rates are going up everywhere. It’s just a question of how fast and how high, so there’s no surprise that the people across the country are disappointed and feel they have been misled by a President when he said rates will actually go down by $2,500 a family.
“So when we look at the states that have been putting out their numbers for next year, for a lot of people is the answer to the question what’s going to happen to rates? They’re going up very fast and very high.
“In Ohio, the average individual market health insurance premium next year will be 88% higher than this year. That’s according to the state insurance department. That’s the state’s official numbers.
“In California, for a typical 40-year-old man who doesn’t smoke, rates in insurance exchange will increase by 116% next year. The McClatchy article also quotes one health care expert saying under the President’s health care law, there are winners and there are losers.
“And I agree, Mr. President, that’s absolutely right. There are winners and there are losers, and we’ll talk about some of them this morning. The problem is the President and Democrats in Congress who pushed this health care act into law, they never said, never admitted to the American people that there were going to be losers.
“Enroll America is telling everybody to sign up for health insurance, but they aren’t admitting that the law picked who wins and who loses.
“So let’s take a look at that. Another important point in this health care law, what’s going to happen and what this new insurance is going to look like. Well, it’s going to be loaded on to the
backs of young people.
“Under the law, many young healthy people will have to pay a lot more for each older, sicker person who will pay less. For the President’s scheme to work, these young healthy people will have to buy high-priced government-mandated insurance they may not need, they may not want, that may not be right for them.
“Here’s another point about what enroll America is telling people and what it’s not telling people about the new Washington mandated insurance.
“This group put up a blog post recently talking about ways states can maximize their Medicaid enrollment. That’s one of the strategies that Enroll America is pushing: get more people signed up for Medicaid. A government Medicaid card doesn’t ensure patients actually get access to quality medical care for themselves or their families.
“According to one survey, a third of physicians nationwide are unwilling to accept new Medicaid patients. Other studies have concluded that some patients in the Medicaid program do even worse in terms of health than people who have no insurance at all.
“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that the health care law will put another 13 million people into the broken and failing Medicaid program.
“Even with the enormous expansion of Medicaid, even after a Washington mandate that everybody in America must purchase health insurance and even after enroll America’s big push to sign up more people, the Congressional Budget Office, people who research this, who study this, say the number of uninsured Americans will never fall below 31 million. Will not fall below 31 million people even over the next decade.
“So in spite of all of this revamping of a health care system, significant changes, much to the detriment of the American people because the President was focused on coverage, he still is leaving 31 million people uncovered and others paying much, much more.
“Winners and losers. Lots of losers, Mr. President. This law will cost $1.8 trillion over the next decade according to the CBO. It still fails to help millions and millions and millions of Americans.
“So then the question is: who is actually being helped by the law? Because I said there are going to be winners and going to be losers.
“Well, the ‘Wall Street Journal’ just the other day, page B-1, Monday, June 17, ‘Wanted: health care legal experts.’
“Legal experts. The lawyers are turning out to be winners under the health care law. Not the patients. Not the providers. Not the taxpayers. The lawyers.
“The article says, ‘some companies are warning that President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul will cost jobs. Well, it won’t be in their legal departments,’ the article says. It goes on, ‘health care companies racing to comply with the Affordable Care Act and other rules are calling in the lawyers, sparking a mini boom for specialist attorneys who can back stop overloaded internal teams and steer clients through an increasingly crowded regulatory minefield.’
“The point of the health care reform should be to help the American people, not just to create more jobs for lawyers.
“The point should be to increase access to care for people, not just to send them Medicaid cards and tell them that they’re covered.
“The point of reform should be to help people get the care they need from a doctor they choose at
lower costs.
“President Obama doesn’t want to talk about the ways his health care law picks winners and losers. He doesn’t want to talk about the many, many losers under his plan.
“Enroll America doesn’t want to level with the American people to tell people that the health insurance that they get under the President’s law might be one that is not the best for them. If we’re going to truly reform our health care system in this country, the President and his allies should start by telling the American people how his law falls short.”
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