Defending Public Safety Employees' Retirement Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, it has been said that there is nothing certain in life but death and taxes.

I would suggest there is a third item that can be included in that saying, and that is bad news about ObamaCare, because if there is one thing that can be counted on, it is the regular revelation of new ObamaCare failures.

This past week, we learned that the Obama administration cannot verify whether almost $3 billion in subsidies that it paid to insurance companies during the first 4 months of 2014 was properly paid. Thanks to the government's failure to ensure that a reporting system was in place by the time exchange plans went into effect in 2014, the government made payments to insurance companies without any way of verifying if the payments were correct or if the people it made payments for were still enrolled in their plans.

Unfortunately, missing systems are just par for the course when it comes to the President's health care law.

I don't need to remind anyone of the massive breakdowns that occurred when the partially finished healthcare.gov kicked off 2 years ago. The President himself referred to healthcare.gov last week as a ``well-documented disaster.''

But as bad as these problems have been for a health care law that the President once claimed would make purchasing health care as easy as shopping on Amazon, they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ObamaCare.

Two weeks ago, I came to the floor to talk about the massive rate hikes customers on exchanges are facing for 2016. Let me just read a couple headlines from the first week in June. CNN: ``Obamacare sticker shock: Big rate hikes proposed for 2016.'' From the New York Times: ``Many Health Insurers Go Big With Initial 2016 Rate Requests.'' From the Wall Street Journal: ``More Health-Care Insurers Seek Big Premium Increases.'' From the Associated Press: ``8 Minnesota Health Plans Propose Big Premium Hikes for 2016.'' From the Newark Star-Ledger: ``Premiums to jump more than 10 percent on many Obamacare policies.''

I could go on. Nationwide, insurers have requested double-digit premium increases on hundreds of individual and small group plans for 2016. More than 6 million people are enrolled in plans facing average rate increases of 10 percent or more. Around the country, rate increases of 20, 30, and even 40 percent are common.

Yet the President promised that his health care plan ``would bring down the cost of healthcare for millions.'' Well, in fact, the President's health care law has been driving up the cost of health care for millions since its inception. The average family health care premium has increased by almost $3,500 since 2009, despite the President's promise that health insurance costs for families would decrease by $2,500 if his law were passed.

I could go on about ObamaCare's many failures. I could talk about the State exchanges that are failing or those that have already failed. I could talk about the individuals who lost their health insurance plans--plans, I might add, that they liked--as a result of this law. I could talk about the people who no longer can see doctors they saw for years because their new ObamaCare plans have severely limited the network of doctors they can see. I could talk about the small businesses that are struggling with the costs imposed by ObamaCare or the fact that the Congressional Budget Office has stated that the law will reduce work hours equivalent to 2 million full-time workers by the year 2017.

I think every American gets the point. ObamaCare is broken. It has been broken from the beginning. It has failed to deliver on the promise--the President's promise--of more affordable, accessible health care, and it has made things worse for American families.

In the next few days, the Supreme Court will release its decision in the King v. Burwell case. If the Supreme Court abolishes or phases out the ObamaCare subsidies, Republicans will take action to provide effective assistance to Americans to repeal the mandates that forced these Americans to buy government-approved insurance in the first place. Our plan will protect families while we move away from costly, top-down, government-mandated health care and toward a system that will actually drive down costs and increase choices for American families.

President Obama promised that his health care law would be a solution to the problems plaguing our health care system. The last 5 years have proved that ObamaCare is anything but. Not only did ObamaCare fail to solve the existing problems in our health care system, it has created entirely new ones, and American families are those who are suffering as a result.

It is time for Democrats to stop defending this broken law and start working with Republicans to replace it with real health care reform that will lower costs, put patients back in charge, and provide greater access to quality care. That is what we should be working on. That is what the American people expect, and it is long overdue.

I yield the floor.

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