Health Care

Floor Speech

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, yesterday we received news that 4 million people have now signed up in private health care exchanges all across the country. In addition, it was released that about 12 million people have called the call centers in January alone, and 1.1 million people signed up to receive health care through the Affordable Care Act during that time. Young enrollment--the group of individuals for which there has always been a question as to whether they are going to sign up for these exchanges--grew by 65 percent.

It is time for this body to recognize the Affordable Care Act is working. It is working for people who have been desperate to get insurance. It is working for people who have been getting the short end of the stick from insurance companies, and it is working for millions of seniors all across this country who have been paying far too much for prescription drug costs and for preventive health care.

We have known this from the very beginning in Connecticut. Despite the hiccups over enrollment in the fall period, States such as Connecticut that had made a commitment to making this law work, rather than undermining it, have seen the success from day one. Connecticut, at the outset, said that we were going to try to enroll between October 1 and March 31 about 80,000 people. That was our goal. We just announced in Connecticut--a State that is working to implement the law, not undermine the law--that we didn't just hit 80,000, we didn't just hit 100,000, but we have enrolled 126,000 Connecticut residents in our health care exchanges and in Medicaid. Our projection is that we are going to enroll 150,000 people by March 31. That is nearly double our initial estimate. Last week, traffic on Connecticut's Web site rose 31 percent, and the daily enrollments rose by 67 percent.

The stories just keep on coming into our office about the lives that are being changed as people, for the first time in their lives, get access to affordable health care. People such as Susie Clayton, who has been dealing with a cancer diagnosis for over a decade--a crippling, preexisting condition that for most of her adult life has kept her out of the ranks of the insured. I have known Susie for probably two decades. Almost every single conversation I have had with Susie over those 20 years has been about her daily struggle to try to deal with her illness and her preexisting condition. Every single day, every single week, she has thought about whether she is going to be able to pay for her health care if she has a reoccurrence of her cancer and whether during that time she is going to have a job that provides her with insurance.

Susie had been paying about $1,700 a month at last count for an insurance plan she could afford. Her life changed on January 1. She now is paying a couple hundred dollars a month in premiums. She finally gets to wake up every day not having to worry about whether she is going to be able to afford coverage, whether she is going to be able to see a doctor to deal with her very difficult diagnosis. With 4 million people now enrolled in these exchanges across the country, that story can be replicated over and over.

A bunch of our Republican colleagues have come to the floor over the last couple of days--I was in the presiding chair yesterday listening to some speeches--regarding some new information about Medicare Advantage. Everybody knows by now that included in the health care bill was an end to the subsidies given to Medicare Advantage plans. The private sector in health care and in other industries always tells us they can do things more cheaply than the Federal Government--and a lot of times they are right about that--but it was exactly the opposite when it came to Medicare Advantage. We were paying private insurance companies 13 percent more than it costs the Federal Government to run Medicare. This was a source of enormous profit for the insurance companies. It didn't make sense to oversubsidize insurance companies to run a program the Federal Government itself was running for 13 percent less money. So we ended those subsidies, and part of the elimination of those subsidies has gone into effect.

But the story that is being told on the floor today isn't true. The fact is that since the Affordable Care Act was passed, even as we have been implementing these cuts to these overly generous, unjustifiable subsidies to insurance companies, Medicare Advantage enrollment has gone up by 30 percent. Thirty percent more seniors are now enrolled in Medicare Advantage, even as these cuts have been imposed. Premiums are down. Medicare Advantage premiums have been reduced by 10 percent.

Over the course of the debate on the Medicare Advantage cuts, I heard Republican after Republican, when I was in the House of Representatives, come to the floor and tell us that the sky was going to fall when we ended these subsidies to insurance companies. I will be honest. A lot of them are in my State of Connecticut. Not only has the sky not fallen, it has risen, with 30 percent more seniors in Medicare Advantage with 10 percent less in premiums. To the argument I have heard on this floor that there will be less choices available to seniors because of these cuts going into effect, let's just be honest: The average Medicare beneficiary has 18 different Medicare Advantage plans to choose from--18 different plans. That is a pretty robust market.

Let me just add that Republicans have voted for these cuts themselves. The Ryan budget, which has essentially been the budget standard for Republicans in both the House and in the Senate--endorsed by hundreds of Republican legislators--the Paul Ryan budget included the cuts to Medicare Advantage subsidies because Republicans have agreed with Democrats that there is no reason to subsidize insurance companies instead of subsidizing beneficiaries.

So what happened when we decided to stop subsidizing Medicare Advantage? Enrollment went up 30 percent. Premiums went down 10 percent. The average beneficiary still had the choice of 18 different plans. But we took that money we saved in padding the pockets of health care insurance companies, and we told seniors that when they show up to get a preventive health care visit, they are not going to have to pay anything out-of-pocket. So since the ACA has been passed, here is how much a senior has to pay for their annual checkup: Nothing. So 25 million people have gotten free preventive care since the Affordable Care Act has been passed.

What else did we do? We decided that this doughnut hole in the prescription drug bill, whereby people got coverage up front and then they had to pay for a certain amount of drugs themselves and then they got catastrophic coverage, didn't make sense. So we eliminated the prescription drug doughnut hole. It will be gone by 2020. It has been cut by more than half already. Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the average senior has saved $1,200 in prescription drug costs thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

So as I listen to my Republican colleagues come to the floor and complain about the cuts to Medicare Advantage--cuts, in fact, that many of them have supported--I think we have to ask ourselves: If we had a choice to provide a 13-percent subsidy to for-profit insurance companies or pass along $1,200 in savings to American seniors and eliminate the costs that many of these fixed-income seniors pay when they go in to get preventive care, what would we choose? This is really all about choices in this body. It is about choices in terms of where we put the money we spend on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries. To me, it is a no-brainer. To the American public, it is a no-brainer. Instead of subsidizing insurance companies, let's subsidize hard-working seniors, who have built this country, with $1,200 in drug savings and 25 million people who have gotten free preventive health care.

For Republicans who have come down to the floor and said they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act or that they want to repeal the cuts to Medicare Advantage plans, essentially they are saying they want to return billions of dollars to the insurance companies and take away that money from seniors in this country. I do not think that is a choice the American people are going to accept.

This week a group of us in the Senate are launching the ACAworks campaign. Later today I will be joined by a number of my colleagues around the corner as we launch a new effort to make clear to the American people that now, with 4 million people enrolled, and millions of people saving money--notwithstanding the legitimate difficulties that were encountered in the first days of the Web site--the Affordable Care Act is working. It is working for millions and millions of people across this country who are finally getting care.

We will be joined today, as well, by a couple of Medicare recipients who are glad they now have the protection when they get into the doughnut hole. They are glad they now get free preventive care. And they will take the choice any day of this Congress and this government investing in them instead of investing in big for-profit insurance companies.

None of us deny there are bumps in the road as you rework one-sixth of the American economy, which represents our health care economy. None of us will deny there is no excuse for the fact that for the first few months there were a lot of people who were not able to enroll who wanted to. But now that the enrollment site is working, now that outreach efforts are up and running, record numbers of people are signing up for health care because there is an almost insatiable demand for quality, affordable health care that is now being met as the Affordable Care Act is working.

I yield back the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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