Health Care

Floor Speech

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today as someone who has practiced medicine in the State of Wyoming since 1983, taking care of families across the great State of Wyoming as an orthopedic surgeon and also as a medical director of the Wyoming Health Care, which is a program to offer low-cost medical screenings, health screenings to help people; early detection, because we know that is a way to keep down the cost of care--to help them find problems before they get too far progressed so we can get effective treatments.

This is a very successful program. Often doctors are asked for their opinions on issues. Then, if a patient has a question, they ask for a second opinion from a second physician.

Well, I come to the floor today to offer my second opinion on this health care bill. I have been doing this week after week, as we have had a year-long debate and discussion about the health care bill that has now been signed into law. I come to the floor because it seems that every week, every week since the bill became law, there has been a new revelation, a new unintended consequence that the people of America look at and say: This is a bill, now a law, that was not passed for me. It is to help someone else.

The promises the American people heard when the bill was being debated and discussed, we are now finding that those promises have been broken. Again this week one of those major promises, fundamental behind the health care law, has been broken. The American people are concerned and distressed because it affects them personally. They believe they were misled.

The goal of the health care legislation last year was to lower the cost of health care. There is agreement all across the country we need to do that; we need to lower the cost of care, to improve quality of care. Absolutely. It is in the best interest of all Americans if we can improve the quality of care; then, of course, to increase access to care. The more we can do to allow more people in this country to have access to care, the better it is.

Lower cost, improved quality, improved access. Well, that is not what this Senate Chamber passed because I believe the bill that was passed is clearly not going to lower cost, and the Congressional Budget Office agrees. It is not going to improve quality, and it is not going to improve access, as we see from statements from the Secretary of Health and Human Services about the shortage of primary care providers, the shortage of physicians and nurse practitioners and others to help. So I continue to believe the law we now have passed is bad for patients, bad for payers, the people who are going to pay the health care bill of this country, and bad for providers, the nurses and doctors who take care of those patients.

I believe the bill fundamentally is going to result in higher costs for patients, less access for care, and unsustainable spending. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said: You are going to have to first pass the bill to find out what is in it. Once again, this past week, we have learned about something new that is in the health care law that many Americans have found surprising.

I would like to contrast a speech President Obama gave 1 year ago this week, 1 year ago yesterday, at the American Medical Association meeting in Chicago. I would like to quote from the speech given by the President, and then contrast it to regulations that have been sent out earlier this week. What a difference a year makes. President Obama said:

So let me begin by saying this--

This was a year ago--

I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage. They like their plan and they value their relationship with their doctor.

He went on to say:

And that means that no matter how we reform health care we will keep this promise.

If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.

He went on to say:

If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away no matter what.

Well, those are very reassuring words to the 170 million people in this country who get their health insurance coverage through their employer at work. There were 170 million people reassured 1 year ago by the words of the President of the United States that if they like what they have, they can keep it.

This is the line that the President has continued to repeat. Most recently he gave the same reassurance to the senior citizens of this country in a townhall meeting he had just a little over a week ago. But what we are seeing now, instead of allowing Americans to keep their doctors and their health care plans, is another broken promise, a broken promise to the American people.

On Friday of last week, the Associated Press reported that 51 percent, over half of all Americans, a majority of those 170 million who get their health insurance through work, will no longer necessarily be able to keep the health insurance they have.

In the 25 years or so that I have practiced medicine, I know how important it is, having worked with patients, worked with people, what happens when they lose the coverage or have to change their coverage. It is very distressing. Sometimes it can be disorienting to them as they learn what new coverage they have, what they lost. So people who felt reassured last year by the President's comments are now in a situation where 51 percent of them are going to lose the coverage they have.

The Washington Post this week, Tuesday, June 15: The administration estimated that by 2013, health plans covering as many as 69 percent of employees could lose protected status. For small employers, the small businesses of this country, the total could be as high as 80 percent.

I mean, could that really be true? I find it astonishing. We have had calls to our office: Is that really true? We have talked to patients and people that I have taken care of because I have been back in Wyoming this past weekend and ran into a number of former patients of mine. They said: Is that really going to happen?

Let's see what the rules are that came out. These are the rules that came out on Monday. I mean, it is interesting to get rules on health care, and what are the first two lines? Department of the Treasury. Internal Revenue Service.

The Internal Revenue Service is writing the rules and regulations dealing with the health care bill. It goes on with the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services. This is titled, ``Interim Final Rules For Group Health Plans And Health Insurance Coverage.''

This is 121 pages. I am not going to go through all of it, but I would like to call your attention to page 54. On page 54 there is a table, and the table is called ``Estimates of the Cumulative Percentage of Employer Plans Relinquishing,'' having to give up, ``Their Grandfathered Status.''

What it means is the percentage of employer plans of people who have the insurance they like they are not going to be able to keep.

They have a low-end estimate, a mid-range estimate and a high-end estimate of all of the employer plans in the country. It covers 170 million Americans. It says by the year 2013, just a few years from now, 51 percent, 51 percent of Americans will lose what they have now. It talks about the high estimate for the small employer plans, 80 percent.

So how can that be true? So 80 percent of small employers--that is the lifeblood of our economy, and we are at a point in this country where we have unemployment at 9.7 percent, and small business is the engine, the engine that grows the economy. Seventy percent of all new jobs in this country are created by small businesses. Yet for people who work in small businesses, it looks like up to 80 percent of them, over the next couple of years, are not going to be able to keep the health insurance they have now.

Why? Because the rules and regulations that have come out related to the law that has now been passed, in spite of the President's promise right here behind us--you will be able to keep your doctor, period; you will be able to keep your health care plan, period--the American people are finding that those words, those words, are not being held out in what was passed into law and the regulations that have now been written.

Headline, Wednesday, June 16, today, national newspaper: ``So much for `Keeping Your Plan.' ''

Now, actually there are some people who can keep their plans--very few.

Headline, ``Union Contract Can Exempt Plans From

ObamaCare.'' So you do not get to necessarily keep your plan, it says, unless a union negotiated your coverage. The administration has granted a special exemption to those, and apparently only those, health care plans, a special exemption offered by the administration, according to this article, for those whose plans have been negotiated by the unions.

You do not have to go very far. All you need to do is open a newspaper. This is on Capitol Hill just the other day, Tuesday, June 8. It says, talking about health care, there is a picture of a doctor with an eye chart: ``Comprehensive, but Not for All.''

``Health reform ban on annual limits may end up hurting lower wage workers.'' Well, I thought that the whole idea behind this was to help additional workers, to help additional workers get coverage, get care. First paragraph:

Part of the health care overhaul due to kick in this September, could end up stripping more than a million people of their insurance coverage, violating a key goal of President Barack Obama's reforms.

There it is in black and white: ``Violating a key goal of President Barack Obama's reforms.'' These are identifiable victims of ObamaCare, losers under ObamaCare. Promises made and promises broken.

What about the President's promise on the cost of care, bending the cost curve down? Well, yesterday, in The Hill:

Report projects a rise of 9 percent in employers' health costs in 2011.

But was it not Obama who said his legislation was going to actually allow Americans to have a lowering of their premiums by $2,500 per year per family? Well, how does that work with the projected rise in cost? So, once again, the American people heard one thing and now they are being delivered something very different.

That is why I come to the Senate floor today--to say it is time to repeal this legislation and replace it, replace this legislation with legislation that delivers more personal responsibility and more opportunities for individual patients, a patient-centered health care bill, a bill that allows Americans to buy insurance across State lines. We need a bill that will give more competition and will allow the costs to come down, that gives people who own their own health insurance an opportunity to get the same tax relief big companies get. That is important. That will help people.

How about a bill that includes a provision to give individual incentives to people who take responsibility for their own health care and their own health, do things like the people who come to the Wyoming Health Fairs, early detection, early treatment.

We know, and I have seen this in my years of practicing medicine, about half of all of the money we spend in this country on health care is on just 5 percent of the people. If we can focus on those 5 percent and help them with healthy lifestyles and good choices, we can get down the cost of their care.

Then we need a bill that deals with lawsuit abuse. That will help lower the amount of defensive medicine practiced and help lower the cost of care, plus one that allows small businesses to join together and then shop much more effectually to buy a lower cost health insurance plan.

Well, you can imagine what is happening right now in small businesses across America, as I have just brought to the attention of the Senate. When 80 percent, up to 80 percent of people with small business health plans who are getting their insurance that way, according to the new regulations put out by the Internal Revenue Service, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services, up to 80 percent are not going to be able to keep the coverage they now have and now enjoy under their current plans come the year 2013.

Those are the things that will make a difference. That is why I come to the floor today. I offer my second opinion about health care law, and now it is the law that I think is going to end up--and the American people understand this, and they see through it--is going to end up being bad for patients who need care, bad for payers, people paying for their health care costs, and the taxpayers of this country, as well as bad for providers, the nurses and the doctors and the hospitals who take care of those patients.

I yield the floor.

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