“Real people, who are facing real health care problems, are being hurt because of this Administration’s failed health care law. Because of this law, millions of people are getting letters saying that their insurance has been cancelled.”
Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso’s speech.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) spoke about how Americans are being hurt by the President’s health care law due to increased costs, dropped coverage and the news that they can no longer keep their family doctor.
Excerpts of his remarks:
“I just returned from spending the weekend in my home state of Wyoming, traveling around the state, visiting with people in Natrona County in Casper as well as in Rock Springs, Wyoming at a marvelous event there in Sweetwater County called Cowboys Against Cancer.
“700 people were there to celebrate successes and remember those who we’ve lost in these battles. And I was there along with Senator Enzi, as well as our governor and others talking about the issues that are facing the nation, which is of course is on everyone’s mind is the health care law.
“This has been a very rough five weeks for hardworking Americans who are concerned about their health.
“Many people were hoping that the Democrats’ health care law would actually help decrease costs—that it would actually help increase access to quality health care.
“But all of America knows it just hasn’t happened.
“On October first, the Obama Administration launched its health care exchange.
“This was to be the biggest moment of the President’s signature achievement in office. It’s one that people were looking for years to the opening of the exchanges and I would just say it flopped. It completely flopped.
“The website crashed, and it 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 the failure of the exchange is no laughing matter.
“Because this is much more than a failed website.
“Real people, who are facing real health care problems, are being hurt because of this Administration’s failed health care law.
“Because of this law, millions of people are getting letters saying that their insurance has been cancelled.
“And I’ve talked to some of them this past weekend in Wyoming.
“At least three and a half million across the country, and the number continues to climb every day.
“The Obama Administration says that’s no big deal – they say that only three and a half million people are losing the insurance plans they have now.
“But this administration’s goal, their goal was just seven million people covered in the exchanges. Why does the White House think that 3.5 million Americans losing their coverage is no big deal – when their goal this year is 7 million Americans?
“President Obama and Democrats in Congress promised over and over again that if you liked your insurance, you could keep it. And it just wasn’t true.
“The Washington Post fact checker looked into the President’s claim. These are the folks that say truthful, not truthful. They gave him the full four Pinocchio’s for completely false claims.
“The fact checker wrote that: ‘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.
“The law did pass, and people across the country are learning how much it’s going to actually hurt them personally.
“For millions of people who are losing the insurance that they have, they’re finding that the options available under the Democrats’ health care law are much more limited, and much more expensive.
“Their rates are higher, their deductibles are higher, their copays are higher.
“It’s not the kind of reform that people wanted or needed – but that’s what the Washington Democrats gave them.
“The cost increases, and the cancelled insurance policies are just the beginning.
“A lot of people are now starting to realize that they’re no longer going to have access to their family’s doctor.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
“President Obama said in 2009, he said: ‘We will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.’
“That’s 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.
“Well, the White House did make that promise. Democrats did pass that law. And American families all across the country are suffering as a result.
“The Wall Street Journal—it’s an absolutely devastating piece by one woman who’s suffering because of the health care law.
“Her name is Edie Littlefield Sundby, she wrote about her experience fighting stage four gallbladder cancer.
“She had a health care plan, with affordable access to good doctors who she points out saved her life.
“And as a doctor, I will tell you stage four 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’s been told that the plan that she has is being cancelled—because of the President’s health care law.
“Here’s what she wrote, she said: ‘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,’ she writes, ‘I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician.’
“Washington Democrats knew that their law would harm people like this lady 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 exchanges launched.
“It was called a grandfather clause to protect people from the law’s new rules and mandates—to let people if they had something they liked, keep what they have.
“Less than three months after the President signed his health care law, the Administration issued a regulation—and the regulation set very specific criteria that these health plans had to meet in order to be grandfathered.
“The regulation dismantled the section of the law by placing unreasonable, 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 the flexibility, to increase their plan deductible, or their co-payments rather than face higher monthly premiums.
“It’s a natural thing to want to do. People do it with their health insurance, they do it with their car insurance, they do it with their homeowners insurance. It is just part of being responsible, looking at things and making decisions for you and your family.
“The Obama Administration’s regulation took away that choice.
“Republicans saw this train wreck coming, and we tried to stop it.
“Actually, it was my colleague Senator Enzi of Wyoming who back in 2010, Mike Enzi brought Senate Joint Resolution 39 to this floor in this body.
“This was a resolution to disapprove. This resolution of disapproval would have immediately overturned the Administration’s burdensome regulations on grandfather.
“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 like 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 like it.
“Now, Democrats don’t want to hear about people like Edie with stage four 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 us with a 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 as recently as this year, not too 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 like allowing people to buy insurance across state lines.
“That would increase access to coverage and to care, not decrease it.
“That would increase competition, it would bring down prices—it wouldn’t raise them, but the Democrats’ health care law is doing just that.
“That would be a reform that would actually help the American people—but the Obama health care law took the exact opposite approach.
“Here’s 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, say anything, say whatever they needed to get that win, whether it was true or not.
“Now, 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, and to help the American people who have been hurt and continue to be hurt by his health care law.”
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