“Government aid is supposed to be for those who need it – people who can’t make it on their own. But that’s not been the focus of the Democrats with this legislation.”

Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso’s remarks.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) spoke on the Senate floor about how the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion spending bill will give health care subsidies to people who do not need them rather than to those truly in need.

Excerpts of Senator Barrasso’s remarks:

“I’ve come to the floor on several occasions now to talk about this $1.9 trillion spending bill that will be soon before this body.

“I’ve talked about different parts of the bill on different occasions.

“I talked about the mandates, the bailouts, and the billions of dollars of spending unrelated to coronavirus.

“These are all reasons enough to oppose this piece of legislation.

“Today, I would like to talk about another problem that I see with the bill, and that’s that this bill would now subsidize health insurance far beyond what was ever imagined when the House and the Senate passed the Obama health care law – way beyond the subsidizes ever envisioned in that.

“One analysis shows that this bill would give a family of four, making close to one quarter of a million dollars a year, up to $9,000 in free subsides for health care.

“That’s not four times the poverty level, that’s almost four times the average income of a household in the United States.

“Government aid is supposed to be for those who need it – people who can’t make it on their own. But that’s not been the focus of the Democrats with this legislation.

“This legislation is not about coronavirus, not about coronavirus testing and vaccination. They’ve already been paid for so that someone who wants to get a test or vaccine, they get it. It’s paid for previously. The vaccines are free. We don’t need additional money to pay for the shot. We voted on that last year. It’s the law of the land.

“This new proposal with these additional subsides is just going to get us this much closer to one-size-fits-all, socialized medicine.

“Democrats have realized for many years that the Obamacare health care law has failed America. They know it’s unaffordable for working families. People understand that the copays are so high, the deductibles are so high that people that have been mandated to buy it found that they didn’t really get any value for their money.

“Many people I’ve talked to said with Obamacare the premiums were so high, it was actually higher than their mortgage at home.

“Republicans want to lower health care costs, actually the cost of care. Democrats seem to just want to raise what government pays.

“Democrats are also trying to pressure states into expand Medicaid and about a dozen states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid.

“I’m a doctor. I know the importance of Medicaid, the importance of providing care for people who cannot care for themselves. Often that is low-income families, pregnant women, and patients with disabilities.

“You look at the original intent of Medicaid, huge value for the American people. But not with what they’ve seen with the Obamacare expansion.

“We should work together for these most vulnerable of individuals so they can get the care that they need.

“Yet that is not what Democrats are doing with this proposal.

“They’re trying to bribe the states to give free care to able bodied, working adults. Not the people who were originally intended to be helped by Medicaid, but for able-bodied working adults.

“Those are people who ought to be getting their health insurance through their job through work.

“That’s the best way this works for them, insurance that they can use without these extraordinarily high deductibles and copays that we see with Obamacare.

“The contrast could not be clearer.

“Republicans are offering the American people a stronger economy and opening schools. That’s what we ought to be focusing on.

“Democrats and the health care law is subsidizing health insurance for the rich. It’s astonishing. You wouldn’t think it would be that way. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not coronavirus relief.

“People need relief now. They want to get their kids back to school, they want to get back to work and they want to put the virus behind them. That’s not what I see in this $1.9 trillion bill that the Senate will soon be considering.

“I think only one dollar out of 11 of this $1.9 trillion bill actually goes to help get people back to work, kids back to school, focuses on the health care components of the coronavirus.

“The kids back to school component, they say there’s money to get kids back to school, 95% of that money doesn’t even start to get spent until 2022. Coronavirus crisis is going to be behind us by 2022.

“We should be working together, targeting support for the American people who need it the most, not subsidizing people who don’t actually need the subsidies.”

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