John Barrasso

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor week after week and talk about the President's health care law. As a physician who has practiced medicine in Wyoming for 25 years, I am here to give a doctor's second opinion about the law. As we continue to learn more and more and see more and more, I am concerned about how the law affects my former patients, the doctors and nurses who take care of those patients, and the taxpayers who, of course, have been impacted as well. It has been clear for a long time that this health care law is not working. It has been obvious from the beginning that this law would not work out the way the Democrats had promised the American people it would work out. Republicans had warned that it was a terrible idea, and even some Democrats have admitted this law has been a train wreck. The Obama administration has been desperate to talk about anything but the failure of the health care law, and they have been desperate to hide some of the biggest problems with the law. The President has unilaterally made one change after another--sometimes with, in my opinion, no legal authority to do so--and tried to do this in a way that, perhaps, nobody would even notice. Late yesterday the administration leaked word that it would delay again the law's unpopular employer mandate. It was the second time the Obama administration had changed the health care law in just a few days. On the front page of USA Today, above the fold: ``Health law faces new delay.'' The Wall Street Journal: ``Health-Law Mandate Put Off Again.'' The Washington Post reported on modifications over the weekend. This is from Saturday: ``Administration to allow some changes to health-care plans.'' That article says: The Obama administration has quietly reworked rules and computer code for HealthCare.gov to try to stem an outpouring of discontent-- ``an outpouring of discontent''-- by . . . Americans who have discovered that the health plans they bought do not include their old doctors or allow them to add new babies or spouses. So the administration then sent out a 14-page memo to insurance companies with changes to how its Web site works and new rules for how people can buy coverage. The Washington Post article goes on to say: The changes reflect recent work--still underway--to improve the computer system for the marketplace, as well as fresh thinking about the needs of people who are buying the coverage. ``Fresh thinking about the needs of people who are buying the coverage''? Did the administration not think of these people before they wrote all of these things? The Obama administration has been working on this Web site for 4 years. Do they not talk to people and think about people and lives? I know a lot of these folks who work for the administration have gone right from college to graduate or law school and then right into some cubicle on the administration's payroll. Do they have no clue about how the real world works? It is worse than that. On Super Bowl Sunday, President Obama sat down for an interview, and he was asked about the failure of his health care Web site, healthcare.gov--the Web site. This is what he said: It got fixed within a month and half, it was up and running and now it's working the way it's supposed to. I do not think many people around the country who have gone on this Web site even today believe it is working the way it is supposed to. The President was with Bill Clinton in September at the Clinton Forum, and President Obama said: Easier to use than Amazon, cheaper to buy than your cell phone bill. I assume the President actually believed that. I assume the President believes it is working the way it is supposed to today. But I think that is the reason the President's poll numbers are so low--because the American people say the President is out of touch with what the American people are seeing in their own homes and in their own communities, and the President in the White House has very little realization of what is happening in America. So according to the President, healthcare.gov is now working the way it is supposed to work. Well, if that is true, why did we learn a week later that there are another 14 pages of rules changes and changes to the Web site? Did the President not have a clue that they were even coming? Why do we learn now that their work is ``still underway,'' trying to think about the needs of people who have been forced to buy insurance through this Web site? Back in December the press gave President Obama the lie of the year award for his statement that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Well, when the President says that his Web site is working the way it is supposed to, either he continues to be in denial or he has another entry for this year's lie of the year. On Sunday, Bob Schieffer on ``Face the Nation'' asked about the latest rules changes. Those were the rules changes that were before Sunday, not the ones that came out yesterday. The President has changed these rules now over two dozen times. Bob Schieffer said: ``Things just seem, in every day and every way, to be more confused.'' This is Bob Schieffer, who for years, as the face of ``Face the Nation,'' has become a trusted person whom people turn to. As he says in a reasonable way, things just seem, in every day and every way, to be more confused. He then asked: ``Is there any hope of getting it straightened out?'' That is what Bob Schieffer asked-- ``any hope of getting it straightened out?'' Well, the majority party whip was on the show. The Democratic Senator was on the show, and instead of answering the question, he avoided it. He tried to change the subject, and he repeated an old Democratic talking point. This time that Senator claimed that ``10 million Americans have health insurance today who would not have had it''--this is the Democratic Senator--without the President's law--not actually responding to the question from Bob Schieffer about whether we can get things straightened out--no, not at all, not answering whether there is any hope of getting the law straightened out, just the same old talking points, and the talking points are not even true. The Washington Post Fact Checker said the statement was so wrong, it deserved four Pinocchios--the most you can get. Well, that is the highest number possible--four Pinocchios. The Washington Post called the Democratic Senator's claim ``simply ridiculous.'' The reality is that the overwhelming majority of the American people signing up under the Obama health care law already had health insurance, so they are actually not getting new insurance or are newly insured because of the law. These are people who got cancellation letters and then said: Uh-oh, I need to get insurance. So then they went to the Web site to buy something--often much more expensive, requiring higher copays, higher deductibles. The law forced them to lose the coverage they had and the coverage that actually had worked for them. Many people are paying far more now than they were for worse coverage, and it is not the right fit for their families. They are often paying for insurance which they are not going to use, do not want, which is more than they would ever need, and they are paying more than they ever had intended. That is what I hear when I talk to people in Wyoming. I was in Wyoming--in Cheyenne and Casper--this weekend. That is what I hear at home. The administration does not want to talk about that. Democrats in Washington do not want to talk about it at all. They just want to repeat their talking points even though they are completely false and have been proven to be false. Democrats want to avoid the tough questions about how the law has failed. They rely on denial and deception. The Web site still is not working in spite of what the President may have said on Super Bowl Sunday. The law is not working. The answer to the question is, No, there is no hope of getting it straightened out. The Web site problems we have seen are just the tip of the iceberg. People are paying higher premiums. Coverages are canceled. People cannot keep their doctors. Fraud and identity theft are going to continue to be a plague of this health care Web site. People are paying higher copays and deductibles. It has been reported, interestingly enough, that in California, with the so- called navigators--the people who are the certified navigators--over 40 of them are convicted criminals. Forty convicted criminals were hired and certified--certified--to be navigators in California in spite of the fact that people are being asked to give personal information, health information, financial information to these navigators. So it is no surprise that we are going to continue to see issues of fraud and identity theft. Another interesting thing we learned recently: The Congressional Budget Office came out with its new estimates about the health care law and its effect on parts of the economy and on jobs. It also talked about the number of people who do not have insurance. It said that in the year 2024--10 years from now--there will be 31 million Americans who will be uninsured: Ten years from now, 31 million Americans uninsured. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, this past Sunday before the Super Bowl, President Obama sat down for an interview. The President was asked about the failure of his healthcare.gov Web site. He talked about how there are always glitches with technology. But then he said this about the Web site: It got fixed within a month and a half, it was up and running and now it's working the way it's supposed to. According to the President of the United States, healthcare.gov is now ``working the way it's supposed to.'' The President of the United States is in denial. This is an incredible statement that he has made. I find it especially hard to believe, when I looked at the Washington Post the next morning--on Monday, the day after the President's interview where he said ``it's working the way it's supposed to.'' Then look at the headline on the front page of the Washington Post on Monday, ``Health site can't handle appeals.'' Thousands of requests for fixes were filed but unprocessed. Is this what the President of the United States means when he says now ``it's working the way it's supposed to?'' Is the President oblivious to what is happening in this country with his signature piece of legislation? According to this article: Tens of thousands of people who discovered that HealthCare.gov made mistakes as they were signing up for a health care plan are confronting a new roadblock: The government cannot yet fix the errors. The President may think it is perfect, but there are a lot of errors with his Web site. To say it is working the way it is supposed to, to me, cites Presidential denial. ``About 22,000 Americans,'' the article says. Is this what President Obama means when he says the Web site is working ``the way it's supposed to''? I am talking about the front page of the Washington Post, above the fold. One woman quoted in the article says that because of a mistake by the Web site, she is paying $100 a month more than she should and her deductible is $4,000 too high. She said she needed the insurance, and now she is stuck. Is this what President Obama thought the Web site was supposed to do? Was it supposed to overcharge this woman $100 a month and set her deductible too high by $4,000? Was it supposed to prevent her from appealing that mistake? You are stuck with it. The mistake was made by the Web site. You are stuck. This is what the President seems to think. Here is another headline which ran on Monday, the day after the President's interview. This was in the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska. It says, ``Enroll Alaska mistakenly releases hundreds of e-mail addresses.'' Alaska is one of the States which doesn't use their own exchange. They are part of the Federal exchange which uses healthcare.gov. The article says: Enroll Alaska mistakenly released about 300 email addresses Monday afternoon when an employee sent out a mass message about a healthcare.gov glitch without masking its recipients. So, No. 1, there was a glitch. Remember, the President says now ``it's working the way it's supposed to.'' So there was a glitch; they sent out an email explaining the glitch, and they end up releasing all of the people's personal email addresses when they are trying to point out to the incompetence of the Web site in the first place. Is this the way President Obama thinks things are supposed to work with his Web site? This is the kind of security issue many of us have been worried about from the beginning. People have to provide a lot of their personal information in this Web site--financial information, health information, Social Security number, demographic information. There is not enough assurance the information is being properly protected. So this time they sent out people's email addresses. Maybe next time they will send out people's Social Security numbers, their health information, their financial information or other personal information. That is not even talking about the lack of security on the Web site and whether hackers can break in and steal information. This is just human error, carelessness, and what people connected to the site are sending out by mistake. It is a very real concern. For the President to not take this seriously--and I believe he doesn't take it seriously. I believe he has his head in the sand on all of this, and he has dug in on this law. For the President to not take this seriously and say that everything is going ``the way it's supposed to'' is a very real problem with the man in the White House. That is just the Web site. That is what the President was talking about in the interview. What else about the health care law is working the way it is supposed to, I ask the Presiding Officer. Is it the millions of people who will be dropping out of the labor force because of the law? On Tuesday morning, the Congressional Budget Office said that is exactly what is going to happen. Here is how the papers reported it: The New York Times, ``Health Care Law Projected to Cut the Labor Force.'' The Wall Street Journal, ``Health Law to Cut Into Labor Force.'' Here is how The Hill put it, ``ObamaCare will cost 2.5M workers by 2024.'' Is this the way the Obama administration thinks its health care law is supposed to work? They are actually saying, yes, it is. Jason Furman, the President's top economist, said the health care law ``is helping labor markets, is helping businesses, and is helping jobs.'' Helping labor markets? Because of the failed policies of the Obama administration, we have the lowest labor force participation rate in 35 years. People have given up looking for work. The administration should be doing all it can to increase the labor force participation, not celebrating that its health care law is going to push that number even lower. Middle-class Americans all across this country have seen their insurance premiums go up significantly because of the health care law's costly mandates. They have seen their deductibles go up. Millions of hard-working Americans have had their insurance policies canceled. Why? Because of the law. Now we are seeing people's personal information put at risk and we are seeing the damage the law is doing to the labor force. President Obama says, ``It's working just the way it's supposed to.'' The President is wrong. The Web site is not working and his health care law isn't working. It is not working for the American people. The Web site is just the tip of the iceberg. People are finding they can't keep their insurance even if they like it. The front page story today of the Wall Street Journal: It is harder to keep your doctor, even if you want to keep your doctor, in spite of the President's promise. We have millions who have had their policies canceled, others losing their doctors. We have seen premium costs go up, we have seen deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses go up and the issue of security fraud. The Web site is a problem. The Web site failure is just a tip of the iceberg. It is time to get rid of this terrible health care law and replace it with real reform before it does additional damage to America's labor force and to the American people. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Last week President Obama came to Congress and delivered the State of the Union Address. He admitted that under the Obama economy too many Americans are still out of work. The President didn't admit that his policies were to blame, but he did promise to act. He said: ``Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I am going to do.'' What the President promised all of us he promised the country last week. I believe the President could start by coming clean about how his health care law is hurting jobs and harming middle-class Americans. Just this morning, the Congressional Budget Office put out their estimate that the President's health care law will reduce the number of full-time workers by 2.3 million people by the year 2021. That includes people who will lose their jobs, people who will have their hours cut, and mostly people who will decide not to work. This is one of the perverse incentives in this terrible law. It actually encourages able- bodied people to not work. We are already faced with the lowest labor force participation rate we have seen in 35 years and this number they have come out with--over 2 million fewer jobs in our economy. When we were debating the health care in the Senate and the CBO came out with their estimate based on the way they read the law before it went into effect, they said this could negatively impact jobs and the economy to the tune of 800,000. Now we are at 2\1/2\ times that many--over 2 million fewer jobs--and as a result specifically of the health care law. We should be doing all we can to increase labor force participation. The health care law actually pushes it in the opposite direction. The Congressional Budget Office also said this morning that the health care law will provide health insurance to 2 million fewer people this year than previous estimates had expected. One of the main reasons Democrats insisted they needed to pass this law in the first place was to cover uninsured people. Now the Congressional Budget Office doesn't even expect it to do the job the Democrats intended it to do very well. The law is raising costs, it is hurting middle-class Americans, and not even helping the people the Democrats told us it was going to help in the first place. President Obama promised last week to act and to do something to create jobs. What we see is this health care law is actually reducing jobs and reducing the number of people working. There are other things the President could do to help create jobs. The first thing, though, would be to work with Republicans to help repeal the health care law and come up with reforms that will actually work. He could also look at a number of the options on the energy front that would help the private sector create jobs--no government money needed. The President says he wants to do things that don't require legislation. Without any legislation at all, the President could approve the Keystone XL Pipeline and expand opportunity for thousands of American families. Over the past 5 years, a small number of lawyers, consultants, bureaucrats, and environmental activists have made a living over haggling about the pipeline. Meanwhile, the President has turned his back on middle-class people who are in need of jobs, desperate need of jobs--people living in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, other States. TransCanada submitted its application for a permit to build the Keystone XL Pipeline more than 5 years ago. Ever since, President Obama has wasted America's time and money grasping for excuses in order for him to be able to reject it. The State Department's latest environmental review confirms yet again that the pipeline shows no significant environmental impact, and it will support more than 42,000 jobs. Last summer, the President sneered at those jobs. He said they were just ``a blip relative to the need.'' For out-of-work Americans, those jobs are more than a blip. For them, this is more than a pipeline, it is a lifeline. It is way past time for President Obama to quit stalling and to finally do the right thing for those Americans. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Yet the Obama administration has been doing the same thing over and over. We have had a draft environmental impact statement. We have had a supplemental environmental impact statement, we have had a final environmental impact statement, then we have had a draft supplemental impact statement, and Friday we had the final supplemental environmental impact statement. People at home listening to this would say why would it take 2 years--and it did, it took 2 years--to go from the supplemental draft environmental impact to the draft supplemental environmental impact statement. It makes no sense at all. This is the fifth report by the State Department and the conclusion is always the same. They could do this report another 5 times or another 50 times. The result is still going to be the same. It is a simple cost-benefit analysis. The cost is no significant environmental impact. The benefits are at least 42,000 jobs and a chance to reduce our dependence on overseas oil. Now that the complaints from the far-left environmental extremists have been debunked, what do they say? According to the news reports, some will have protests and some are planning lawsuits. The Washington Post had a story this Sunday entitled ``For pipeline, the `gut check' moment.'' It talked about some of the fanatical anti-energy protesters who refuse to accept the science. They want to pressure the President and Secretary of State Kerry to make sure these jobs never get created. This is one good quote: ``Neva Goodwin, co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University and a contributor to Kerry's past campaigns, said that she will be opposing the pipeline in another way.'' The article quotes her as saying: ``I am working with an informal network of political donors that will be pushing Kerry to do the right thing.'' Political donors and activists on the left are committed to killing this pipeline, regardless of the science, regardless of the middle- class jobs, and regardless of what is in the best interests of the country. I find it astonishing that former Energy Secretary Steven Chu said yesterday, on this very point, what about the science, what about the cost-benefit analysis. President Obama's former Secretary of Energy said yesterday: ``The decision on whether the construction should happen was a political one, not a scientific one.'' So much for the President of the United States saying the decision would be based on science. The President's activist base will be mobilizing and fighting against good American jobs. So what does the administration itself say? It says it wants to wait for some more opinions. The White House Chief of Staff said Sunday that the President wants officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department, and other agencies to tell him what they think. I know what the former Secretary of Energy thought. He said the decision on whether the construction should happen was a political decision, not a scientific one. You don't need to look any further. Look at the history of the project. TransCanada applied to build this pipeline more than 5 years ago. The Obama administration has set deadlines and said it would make a decision. First, it was the end of 2011; then it was after the election in 2012; and then it was at the end of 2013. That is what President Obama promised Republican Senators when he met with us last March. The administration has missed every deadline, broken every promise. It is interesting because the last time the Senate voted on the subject, 17 Democrats joined every Republican to support the pipeline. The Obama administration is still trying to find a way to evade and to avoid having to make a decision. This really ought to be embarrassing to an administration. President Obama was elected to make decisions. The science is settled. The President should be embarrassed when his former Secretary of Energy says the decision on whether the construction should happen was a political one and not a scientific one. Any objections have been heard; they have been answered. There are no more excuses. It is time for the President to make up his mind. Is he going to follow the science or just the politics? He should approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. He should do it now. He should do the job he was elected to do so middle-class Americans can do the jobs they desperately want to do. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, as someone who has practiced medicine in Wyoming for about a quarter of a century, and as medical director of the Wyoming health fairs to bring low-cost blood screenings to people all around Wyoming, I have been very involved in the health care issue and in actually helping to provide health care for people. It was ironic last night during the State of the Union Address to listen to the President talk about health care as if he had some understanding of how it all worked. It became evident to me, sadly, that the President put forth some bold proposals and then came out with a 2,700-page bill that I think many people who voted for never read, didn't understand, didn't know the harm it was going to do to American families, and then the President last night was talking about it in the State of the Union Address in ways that it is actually helping people. It may be helping some, but it is hurting many more. It is not just the Web site. The Web site is the tip of the iceberg. There is huge damage being done to families. Today I have a letter with me that just came in from a family in Wyoming to talk about how much this is harming this person's individual family. A man from Upton, WY, a small community, somebody who tries to get up every day, go to work, take care of his family, put food on the table. Yet his whole family is being harmed by this law the President has put into place, forced down the throats of the American people on a party-line vote. So let me start with the letter: Opening up my insurance letter today has lead me to write you this letter. I'm usually the type of person that just keeps trudging along-- I think all of us have constituents who are like this-- and take things as they come. I'm a longtime resident of this beautiful state and graduated from the University of Wyoming-- as so many people have done-- I'm married and have 4 young kids from ages 9 to 3. He has four young kids ages 9 to 3. He said: We're a healthy and active family. Non-smokers. Go to doctors for emergency care only. Go to the chiropractor and dentist regularly. I have a high deductible insurance plan. It is a $10,000 deductible, which is high. He says he is paying $584 a month for that. I wish the President of the United States would get letters such as this and read them and understand the impact he is having on people's lives and how much his plan is hurting American families. Justin writes: Now, due to the current healthcare climate, I'm going to have to pay $945 a month. So he will be paying a lot more. He was paying $584, now $945 a month. He says: And they conveniently raised my deductible to $11,000. He had a $10,000 deductible, which is high. They have raised that, and raised his premiums from $584 to $945 a month. He says: How does Obama expect the middle class to stretch their budgets every month to get healthcare coverage? That is what middle-class Americans want to know. How does this President expect the middle class to stretch their budgets every month to get health care coverage? He goes on: How can we get rid of ObamaCare? That is a question I was asked repeatedly around the State of Wyoming last week. This gentleman goes on to say: Every chance you get, please vote to repeal ObamaCare. The President last night ridiculed people such as Justin--ridiculed him--saying, Well, sure, vote over and over and over. This man from Wyoming is saying: Every chance you get, vote to repeal ObamaCare. He also said: Every chance you get please help the middle class. Every chance you get, please help the middle class. We are not seeing that from this President, this administration, and those who supported these policies which have hurt the middle class. He said: Thank you and I appreciate your leadership for the state of Wyoming. Now I'll go back to working hard to pay my insurance bill, (and probably some for the people that Obama is trying to help.) Finally he says: Obama stated to the public that our premiums were not going to rise. Thanks for listening to me rant. I don't consider what we are hearing from my friend Justin from Upton, WY, a rant. I hear it as a cry for help due to a health care law the President and the Democrats forced down the throats of the American people against their will. Many people who voted for it never read it, didn't understand it, and I really have strong doubts the President himself understands the health care law, what is in it, and the damage it continues to do to middle-class Americans and families all across this country. Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, tonight President Obama is going to deliver his State of the Union Address. It will be in front of Congress and the TV cameras, and he will be talking to the American people as well. He and his advisers are probably working right now on some last- minute sound bites and applause lines. But I would say, instead of that, they should be working on an agenda that actually helps unemployed Americans, an agenda that will get our economy back on track. The President doesn't have very many big opportunities left to do this. He is quickly becoming a lameduck President. The President is going to become a lameduck even faster if he comes to the Capitol tonight and delivers a lengthy speech that just attacks Republicans. The economic recession ended 4\1/2\ years ago. Many Americans have still not seen their careers or their finances or their quality of life improve. That is what Americans are looking for. Unfortunately, they haven't found it because of the Obama economy. That is what the Obama economy has done to Americans. Millions of Americans have actually, regrettably, given up looking for work. They are falling further and further behind, further and further away from achieving the dreams they have had. Is the President going to tell those people he has no new ideas about how to actually help them? President Obama is failing. He is failing to make it easier for the American economy to recover and he is failing to help Americans who desperately want to work. He is failing because he is focused on things such as extending emergency unemployment benefits and raising the minimum wage. While an unemployment check can be a vital safety net for families, it is not a long-term solution for what is becoming a part- time economy under President Obama. Tonight the President can deliver yet another partisan political speech--he may get a standing ovation here and there from the most liberal side of the aisle--or he can do what he should do as President: focus on solutions with proven bipartisan support. The President has made a point of saying lately that 2014 will be, as he calls it, a year of action. He said he intends to act on his own, without waiting for Congress. I believe that would be the wrong course. President Obama has had trouble getting some of his policies through Congress, and the main reason is the American people do not support his policies. He should use this speech tonight to move to the center, to show he is willing to work with others. He shouldn't give a speech that shows he is moving further to the left. We have had too much of the President's politics of division. The politics of division is hurting the economy and it is hurting the country. Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill already agree on ideas to get America and Americans back to work. There are many policies that President Obama can talk about in his speech tonight that will not require him to go around Congress but, rather, to come to Congress. I would like to suggest three of them that he should announce tonight. First is the Keystone XL Pipeline. The President should say he will stop blocking construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. His own State Department says that the pipeline construction could support over 42,000 jobs across the country, and a bipartisan group of 62 Senators, 62 Members of this body, backs the project. Early in 2013 President Obama met with Senate Republicans. He told us we would have an answer about the pipeline by the end of the year. That was 2013. The year has come, gone, and the Keystone XL Pipeline approval is still sitting on the President's desk. The American people deserve an answer, and the answer should be yes. Second, the President really should address his reckless Environmental Protection Agency--the EPA--and how its regulations are putting Americans out of work. Recently the EPA released new requirements for powerplants. The requirements are unachievable and they are unnecessary. Ironically, the EPA did this on the exact same day as the 50th anniversary of the start of the war on poverty declared by LBJ. These harsh new regulations are going to cause energy costs to go up, and they are going to cause people to lose their jobs as coal plants are forced to close. The job losses and higher prices are going to fall most heavily on people struggling in Appalachia and across coal country. Higher energy costs clearly hurt our economy. The President must sensibly rein in his EPA before it does even more economic damage. Third, the President should support bipartisan efforts to repeal his medical device tax. This is a destructive tax, and it was part of the health care law. It has been estimated by some that the tax puts thousands of American jobs at risk because it helps to push manufacturing overseas. An amendment to repeal that medical device tax passed right here in the Senate last year with a bipartisan vote of 79 to 20. With all the changes President Obama has made to his health care law, it is barely recognizable. Repealing this tax would be a change that actually helps Americans and not just the President's poll numbers. There are many things the President can talk about tonight that have this sort of bipartisan support. These are just three, but they would be a good place to start. When the President leaves here after the State of the Union, he is going to go visit four States: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and then Tennessee--four States, eight U.S. Senators. When we take a look at who they are, four are Republicans, four are Democrats. All 8 of them--4 Democrats and 4 Republicans--were part of the 79 Members of this body who voted to repeal the medical device tax. When the President's spokesman the other day on Sunday's TV shows said the President is going to use his phone and his pen, I would say he ought to use the phone to call the eight Senators to say: I am going to use my pen, after you vote to repeal the medical device tax, to sign that into law. That is something which would show bipartisanship on the part of the President as well as really help with our economy. Nearly 21 million Americans are out of work or they are trapped in part-time jobs. It is time for President Obama to talk less about divisive ways to redistribute Americans' prosperity and more about helping all Americans increase their own prosperity. America is a strong and resilient nation. We can overcome the Obama economy, and we will. We can overcome--and we will--the bad policies of this administration. The President should come tonight to the Capitol and say he is willing to help Americans return to prosperity. If the President announces these three policies tonight, the country and the economy will benefit and a bipartisan group of Republicans and Democrats will all be able to stand and applaud. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin.) The Republican whip.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I rise today to express our Nation's deepest thanks and gratitude to a Wyoming solider and his family. On January 10, 2014, CWO3 Andrew McAdams of Cheyenne, WY, was killed in the line of duty in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Along with his fellow MC-12 crew members, Chief Warrant Officer 3 McAdams died from injuries he sustained while conducting surveillance operations in eastern Afghanistan. Chief McAdams deployed with Wyoming Army National Guard Detachment 53. He was attached to B Company, 306th Aerial Exploitation Battalion, Task Force ODIN-Afghanistan. Before graduating from Cheyenne East High School, he joined the Army National Guard and graduated from the U.S. Army Warrant Officer Candidate School at Fort Rucker, AL. Andrew's friends have described him as a kind man with an infectious sense of humor. Those who served with Chief McAdams recall his passion for aviation. It is that passion for flight which led him to serve Wyoming and our Nation. Mr. President, it is because of individuals like Andrew McAdams who wear the uniform that we continue to live safe and free. Our men and women who answer the call to service deserve respect and recognition for the enormous burden that they take upon themselves to protect our Nation. They put everything on the line every day. Because of them and their families, our Nation remains free and strong in the face of danger. In the book of John, Jesus said that ``greater love has no man than this, that he lay his life down for his friend.'' Andrew gave his life, that last full measure of devotion, so we can live in a free nation. He gave his life defending his country and its people, and we honor him for this selfless sacrifice. Chief Warrant Officer 3 McAdams is survived by his wife Carol and baby daughter, his mother Katherine and father Brien, sister Laretta and brother-in-law Erick. Andrew is also survived by his brothers and sisters in arms of the U.S. Army. As we say goodbye to a husband, a father, a son, a brother, and an American soldier, our Nation pays its deepest respect to Chief McAdams for his courage, his love of country, and his sacrifice, so that we may remain free. He was a hero in life, and he remains a hero in memory. All of Wyoming, and indeed the entire Nation, is proud of him. May God bless him and his family, and welcome him with open arms.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the 225th anniversary of the founding of Georgetown University. As a proud member of the Georgetown community, it is an honor to help commemorate the school's 225 years of excellence. This milestone marks a time of celebration for all of Georgetown's students, faculty, board of governors, and alumni. As the oldest Catholic and Jesuit institution of higher education in the United States, Georgetown has a long and distinguished history. On January 23, 1789, Bishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, secured the deed to around 60 acres of land overlooking the Potomac River. This hilltop grew to become the campus of Georgetown University. Three years later, in 1791, the first students arrived on campus. At the age of 13, William Gaston was the first student at the university. He went on to serve North Carolina as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and authored a bill granting a Federal charter to ``the College of Georgetown in the District of Columbia'' in 1815. President James Madison signed that legislation into law on March 1, 1815. While buildings on Georgetown's campus were temporarily used as a hospital after the Second Battle of Bull Run, it wasn't until 1851 that Georgetown University Medical School, which I attended in the 1970s, was established. It was the first Catholic medical school in our Nation. The medical school first opened its doors in a vacant warehouse and an adjacent building at 12th and F Streets, NW, before later moving to the university's main campus in 1930. I received both a bachelor of science degree in biology and a doctor of medicine degree from this great university. The quality education and valuable training I received there has had a lasting impact on my life and helped shape my career. I am grateful for my time at this exceptional institution and the incredible influence Georgetown has had on so many people across the United States and around the world. Over the years, there have been numerous Members of Congress who were students at Georgetown University. Today, the U.S. Senate is fortunate to have five other Members who hold degrees from Georgetown University. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska received her bachelor's degree from Georgetown. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, and Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii all received their law degrees from Georgetown Law. The Senate majority whip, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, holds both his undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown. As shown by the geographic range of States represented by these Senators, students come from all over the Nation to attend this wonderful institution of higher education. Georgetown's student body today includes students from all 50 States as well as from 141 countries around the globe. Georgetown is indeed a national as well as a global university. The university's mission statement makes the point that ``the university was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical and spiritual understanding.'' It is clear that this founding principle continues to energize Georgetown University 225 years later. I look forward to all of the great contributions Georgetown will continue to provide in the years ahead through its many areas of academic and research excellence: medicine, law, international affairs, business, public service, and the diverse fields within the arts and sciences. I ask my colleagues to join me in celebrating this significant milestone and wishing Georgetown University continued success in achieving its mission and goals in the future.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, it is no secret that every Republican in this Chamber, every Senator on this side of the aisle voted against the President's health care law. We said it would do great harm to the American people, and we are finding out that is true. It is also no secret that every Democrat in the Senate voted in favor of the health care law. It was partisan, it was a bad idea, and it has failed the country in many ways. People know about the health care Web site. The Web site was a spectacular public failure, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. When we look under the iceberg, we see that people are being hit with higher premiums and canceled coverage. Five million people lost their coverage around the country. People were not able to keep the doctor they had and liked in spite of the President's promise that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. There are concerns about higher copays and deductibles, and fraud and identity theft is also an issue that is plaguing all of America. I believe the health care Web site is a spot where we are going to see more problems in that area. Americans know that fraud and identity theft are big concerns. It has been clear from the start that the health care exchange was vulnerable to con artists and hackers. Information from the government actually went out telling people to be careful with their information because of the concerns about con artists and hackers. So that is a problem, and it is something Washington and this body need to take seriously. Whenever President Obama talks about the health care law, he says that if Republicans have good ideas, please bring them forward, share them, and he will support them. Republicans have offered a lot of ideas on how to give the American people the health care reform they wanted all along. We passed bills in the House of Representatives. We tried to bring up bills here in the Senate. Democrats won't even allow us to vote on those bills in the Senate. As a doctor, I can tell you what people are looking for with health care reform. They want access to quality, affordable health care--care they need from a doctor they choose at lower costs. They didn't get that with the health care law the President and the Democrats shoved down the throats of the American people. Every time the majority leader--at that desk--blocks reform, I believe he is making things worse for millions of Americans. We are trying again to take the President at his word that he will support good Republican ideas. Senator Johanns of Nebraska and I have introduced a commonsense bill that will help protect Americans who use the government insurance exchange. Our bill, called the Health Exchange Security and Transparency Act, requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to notify Americans within 2 business days if their personal information has been stolen due to security breaches on the exchanges. We are not saying it is going to happen, but it sure could happen, and if it does people need to be informed. The House passed a version of this bill last Friday, and it was clearly a bipartisan bill. Sixty-seven Democrats joined Republicans to support this good idea. Now I believe it is our turn here in the Senate. There shouldn't be anything controversial about this at all. This should be the kind of bill we can pass by unanimous consent. After forcing so many Americans to buy insurance through this program, I believe it is the government's responsibility to safeguard Americans' private information. Even Senators who voted for the President's health care law should agree with this. That should be the minimum we require from Washington--keep Americans' private information private. If the government fails to keep that information safe, they should have to admit it and tell people what happened. This bill is a single page. Americans are concerned about their safety online, about having their identity stolen, and this bill would give people at least the reassurance that they would be informed, that if there is identity theft, they would know about it. Look at what just happened to the Target stores. It now looks as if 70 million people had their personal data compromised. Target ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post talking about what happened with their 70 million customers. They apologized for it. The same ad that ran here in the Washington Post also ran in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other papers around the country. Target has told people about the security breach so they can take appropriate steps and watch for signs of identity theft. Target also said they will do free credit checks for a year and addressed the concerns many American people have and said: This is how we will take care of it. All the bill we are offering today says is that if something happens--as happened with Target--on the government's health exchange Web site, Washington should do the same. They should tell people that someone has had access to their personal information so people can protect themselves. The health care law was completely inadequate in how it dealt with personal security issues. The Web site has been a debacle, and we know that. It is a hacker's dream. Even before the Web site was launched last March, it was a mess. CBS News reported that deadlines for the site's final security plans were delayed three times over the summer. So we saw that problem. Final end-to-end security tests were never finished before the Web site was launched. In November, after the Web site was launched, four experts testified before the House about Web site problems. They were asked: Would any of you advise an American citizen to use this Web site as the security system now exists? Not one of the four experts said they would--none. By December, one of those same industry experts said that the situation was even worse. The so-called fixes caused new security patterns and problems. Remember, that was after the White House was claiming it had fixed the Web site. What they had fixed was just the tip of the iceberg, and these problems under the tip continue today. So the House passed a bill on Friday by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, and the President still says he opposes it. Why would the President oppose this bill? Why would he oppose being honest with the American people in helping them protect themselves from identity theft? President Obama has dug in his heels so deep on his health care law that he won't even consider good bipartisan ideas that will help the American people. Senator Johanns and I are going to continue to push for a vote and to call on the President to support this bill. The President needs to keep his promise to support good Republican ideas and to protect the American people from identity theft. As I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg with the Web site. All one has to do is go to this morning's newspapers. The Washington Post, above the fold, front page: ``Insurance sign-ups by young adults lag. Key measure for health-care law. Premiums could jump if more don't enroll.'' Higher premiums, that is what I am hearing from home in Wyoming. Today's Wall Street Journal: ``Health Sign-ups Skew Older, Raising Fears of Higher Costs.'' That is not what the President promised. The President came to the floor of the House of Representatives in a joint session of Congress and said: If you like your coverage, you can keep your coverage. If you like your doctor, you can keep our doctor. He said insurance premiums would drop for people. He made statements over the past years that under his plan insurance policies would drop $2,500 per family. Why is the New York Times saying premiums could jump? The President says one thing; the rest of the world sees another. The New York Times today, again, front page, above the fold: ``Older People Lead Sign-Ups For Insurance. Pattern Could Result in Higher Premiums.'' There are questions about the law's financial viability. The President put together a program, and those of us who actually read the bill ahead of time had great concerns about its success, its viability, its ability to deliver what it promised. The President's promises, one of which has now been called the lie of the year, continue. It has been called that by a group that looks at statements and is somewhat of a referee as political statements are made. To get that kind of an accomplishment for the President just shows how misleading the efforts have been on the American people. The American people see what they are getting in their mail-- cancellation notices. They see what happens when they go to the Web site: higher premiums, sticker shock, and now this threat of ongoing security concerns, especially in light of what is occurring throughout the rest of the country. It is time for the President to keep his word that he does want to work with Republicans for good ideas, and he could do so by adopting this measure passed by the House on Friday that Senator Johanns and I have presented to the Senate for approval today. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today, and as I do so, Washington has an incredible opportunity for a new beginning--a beginning that would begin by listening to the American people and what the American people want, and not just what Washington and the Democrats in this body think is best for all the American people. According to a new Associated Press poll, most Americans say health care reform is the top issue they want the government to work on this year--the top issue they want government to work on this year. Fifty- two percent of people have said that is what they are asking us to work on. People have seen--and I heard about this all around Wyoming over the Christmas holiday--the complete failure of the health care law's big rollout last year. They saw President Obama and they saw Washington Democrats break one promise after another. As a matter of fact, one of the President's promises was designated ``the lie of the year.'' The American people have lost faith this administration can ever get health care reform right. It wasn't just a bad Web site. The President said: Well, the Web site was bad. He said: The health care law is more than a Web site. In spite of what the Obama administration has said, it wasn't all fixed last year because the Web site is just the tip of the iceberg. And huge Web site failures? Absolutely. I heard it everywhere I went around Wyoming, and I actually even heard it brought up when I was in Afghanistan visiting the troops on New Year's Day. So it is not just the Web site, with the higher premiums, canceled coverage, can't keep your doctor, fraud and identity theft, higher copays and higher deductibles; the Web site continues to be just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond all of those things we have been talking about coming down the line and hitting the American people, we have also seen even more problems surface already this year. Here is a headline from the Wall Street Journal, January 3: ``Consumers Hit Snags as Health Law Kicks In.'' The snags? We can imagine what they are. People have been going to the doctor, going to the pharmacy looking for help, and even though they signed up for insurance in the new exchange, it turns out they can't be found. They are not in the system. So Web site failures? Absolutely. Insurance companies aren't sure who is signed up with them. People aren't sure if they are covered. Doctors aren't sure who is covered. Doctors, as a result of their training, their compassion, their care for human beings, are trying their best to help their patients. They have been fighting a losing battle against the exchanges and all of the problems with the new Washington-mandated health insurance. One Chicago doctor tried for 2 hours to verify the new insurance for a patient who was scheduled for surgery. The office manager finally gave up. The doctor went ahead with the surgery without what should have been a routine approval from the insurance company. Here is another problem some people are going to have to deal with this year. The Associated Press ran an article headlined ``Adding a baby to health plan is not easy.'' Every day, babies are born and need to be included in the family's health plan. For common life changes such as having a baby, you would normally just call your insurance company and they would take care of it from there. Not under this law. If you have to buy your insurance through one of the new health care exchanges, it is not that simple. According to the article, ``the HealthCare.gov website can't handle new baby updates, along with a list of other life changes including marriage and divorce, a death in the family, a new job or a change in income, even moving to a different community.'' Yet the Obama administration and the Secretary of Health and Human Services says the Web site is fixed. It can't handle a baby being born, marriage, divorce, moving, change in income. It can't handle any of those things, and they claim it is fixed. Here is another problem that has turned up. Washington Democrats said the law would lead to fewer people visiting emergency rooms--I heard it right here on this floor: fewer people getting their care in emergency rooms--and that would reduce expenses. The reality is very different. The New York Times, Friday morning, January 3: ``Emergency Visits Seen Increasing With Health Law. Doubt Cast on Savings.'' But Democrats on this floor said that emergency visits would decrease and that it would save money. That is not what the New York Times says. They said, ``Oregon Medicaid Test at Hospitals Found Rise of 40 Percent.'' The Wall Street Journal, in the same issue, talks about how the Medicaid expansion drives up emergency room visits. The Washington Post said, ``Study: Expanding Medicaid Doesn't Reduce ER trips. It increases them.'' Democrats don't want to talk about all these problems. They don't want to talk about all of the reform bills which Republicans passed in the House last year but which never got a vote in the Senate in spite of our efforts to try to get votes on those bills. Democrats hope people believe what they are saying, accept their claims that the Web site is working fine and that all the law's problems have been fixed. The American people see through this. They know that what has been done to them by this administration is not right. It is time for Washington Democrats to play it straight with the American people and to make a new beginning on health care reform. I am not talking about more fake fixes like the one we saw right before Christmas. That was the Obama administration quietly announcing that people whose insurance had been canceled because of the law could apply for a hardship exemption to avoid the individual mandate. Well, the newer numbers have come out. There are now more than 5 million health insurance cancellations in 35 States. And we don't even know how many were canceled in Texas, Ohio, Virginia, South Carolina, Missouri, and Wisconsin. We don't know those numbers yet. So we know that a minimum of 5 million people have received cancellation notices and the anxiety that comes with that, as well as the anger. When people tried to replace the plans they lost, many found that their premiums would skyrocket and their deductibles would be higher than ever. I find it interesting that Democrats I have talked to said: Well, January 1 has come, so the numbers aren't going to go up anymore. That is just not true. I was just in my office and got off the phone with a friend in Douglas, WY. He is a pharmacist and provides health insurance for employees. He has fewer than 50 employees, so it is not mandatory under the law that he do so, but he does it anyway and he has done it for years. But Gary is in a situation where he has now received a letter of cancellation of his own insurance policy, and it was dated January 1. This is not something from last year; this is something dated January 1, 2014. It is a letter from the Madison National Life Insurance Company to Gary Shatto at Shatto's Frontier Drug in Douglas, WY. ``Important Notice.'' Can you imagine getting this letter and opening it? ``Important Notice'' in bold print. ``This Affects Your Insurance Contract Rights. Please Read Carefully.'' That would get your attention. This notice is to inform your company that Madison National Life Insurance Company . . . will be exiting the employer small group major medical insurance market in Wyoming effective June 30, 2014 at midnight. Exiting June 30, 2014, at midnight. So what this tells us is these numbers are going to go up because, at 3,000, the numbers in Wyoming are such that we know more people are going to get cancellation notices. And this isn't just for Gary; this is for everybody who works there. They ``will be exiting the employer small group major medical insurance market in Wyoming effective June 30, 2014 at midnight. This decision was prompted by the increased regulation since the federal government's passage of its recent federal health care reform, commonly referred to as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (``PPACA''). ``The increased regulation will make it difficult for Madison National to continue to operate and compete meaningfully in Wyoming's small group major medical market. As such, your referenced insurance coverage will terminate at midnight on June 30, 2014.'' This is what people are going to continue to deal with, letters like this continuing to go out, a new round of letters going out January 1. The President of the United States needs to be honest with the American people about the significant damage his health care law is doing to families all across the country. And as the employer mandate-- which the President has delayed for a year--kicks in this year, we are going to see more and more letters like this and more and more people dumped, losing their insurance, in spite of the President's claim that ``if you like your coverage, you can keep your coverage.'' No wonder the folks who look into these things have labeled it the ``lie of the year.'' The White House continues to try to do this little bandaid approach. Now they say they are going to let some Americans buy catastrophic coverage. That is an idea I proposed to the President at the White House health care roundtable back in February of 2010. After 25 years of practicing medicine, I know that for some people catastrophic coverage is the right option. For many people it is, and it encourages patients to be smart consumers of medical services. But at our meeting 4 years ago President Obama said that these plans were suitable only for the wealthy, that they weren't good ideas. He said that letting people be smarter consumers wouldn't help. Now he has changed his mind. Don't expect him to admit that Republicans were right all along. The President said: Well, the Republicans have no ideas. If they have some ideas, they can bring them to him. There were a number of different bills and proposals by Republicans. The President seems to want to ignore that just as much as he wants to ignore the problems and the misery his health care law has caused for so many people all around the country. Instead of trying to patch this terrible health care law together with chicken wire and duct tape, it is time for Democrats in Washington to admit that this entire law is failing the American people because it absolutely hurts so many American families. Then we can move on to talking about real reforms to give people access to quality, affordable health care. That is the year's top priority of the American people, and it needs to be our top priority in the Senate. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I join my colleagues here on the floor to hear them tell stories that we are hearing from our constituents at home. I saw the newspaper from the State of the Presiding Officer, the New York Times, front-page story, ``Uninsured Skeptical of Health Care Law in Poll.'' This whole law was passed to try to deal with issues of the uninsured. This article on the front page of today's New York Times says 53 percent of the uninsured disapprove of the law. Then they go through some of the numbers and it looks as though for the same number of people who think they will be helped, an equal number of people who are uninsured think they will actually be hurt by this law. Another headline, Wall Street Journal, ``Errors Continue to Plague Health Site.'' But the health care Web site is just the tip of the iceberg. Sure, there have been Web site failures, but the thing that is hurting Americans all around the country is the higher premiums the Senator from Iowa talked about, the canceled coverage the Senator from Iowa talked about, people who cannot keep their doctor in spite of the President's promise, fraud and identity theft, and higher copays and deductibles which we now know are actually going to be higher, after the law has been passed, specifically for the bronze policies, than they were all last year until the law came into effect. I would like to share a letter from a woman in Carbon County, WY, who writes about the harmful effect of the health care law for her life and for her health care. She says: I currently have health insurance through my husband's employer, but the reality is that the current health insurance that we have may not be available much longer. This is scary to me, since I recently did some insurance shopping for my mother. She said her mother is 63 years old and in good health. She said: I was only able to get two quotes. The cheapest quote was for $756 a month with a $6,000 deductible. So we see higher premiums and we see higher copays and deductibles. The prescription deductible for that particular plan was $500, and then the copay for prescriptions was still around $35. The other quote seemed like a better plan and had better co-pay on prescriptions, but that premium was $985 a month. And that is also with a $6,000 deductible. What the heck. Who can afford these kind of premiums? That is more than most mortgage payments. Yet the President of the United States said if you like your coverage, you can keep your coverage; if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. I went on national TV, talked with Bill Clinton a few days before the Web site was opened, and he said it will be easier to use than Amazon, cheaper than your cell phone bill, and if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. It is fascinating, the President was so clueless about his own law and here we are today, people suffering all around the country, and the President doing nothing about it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BARRASSO. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor, as I have frequently since the health care law was passed, as a doctor who has practiced medicine in Wyoming for a quarter of a century, taking care of people, providing low-cost blood screenings through the Wyoming Health Fair, of which I was the medical director. I was back in Wyoming last week talking to folks about their health care and their concerns. With the end of the year rapidly approaching, Americans are gathering with family and friends to celebrate the holidays, to count their blessings. But from what I heard last weekend in Wyoming and on a telephone townhall meeting Monday night, very few people are thankful for the President's health care law. I met yesterday with the Wyoming insurance commissioner. Fewer than 1,000 people have been able to sign up, but thousands have had their insurance canceled under the law. So many more people are suffering because of the law than people who are potentially able to benefit. This law was forced down the throats of the American people, supported unanimously by the Democrats in this body. It is continuing to disrupt people's lives and to cause them very real harm. After a year of false starts and failures, what we have seen is that the President's health care law is nothing more than a collection of deception, delays, and disappointments. If you look at the headlines, the biggest disappointment was the launch of the healthcare.gov Web site in October. It was a total disaster. But it really is just the tip of the iceberg. The Web site failures are what people have seen across the country. That is the most visible, and it has obviously been the cause of concerns and jokes by the late-night comedians. But the real damage is going to start on January 1--damage to people's lives. This was just about a computer screen. Below this tip of the iceberg is what people are actually noticing at home. They are paying higher premiums, and I am hearing that around the State of Wyoming; canceled coverage--thousands in Wyoming but over 5 million, I understand by last count, across the country. And we don't even know how many have been canceled in the States of Illinois, Texas, and Ohio. But we know that more than 5 million people have lost their coverage. People are finding out they can't keep their doctor. We are seeing that with seniors on Medicare, and we are seeing that with children who are going for cancer care. We are finding that people are having a harder time finding a doctor or even having to make choices as they go to the Web site: Well, do I want to keep my doctor or do I want to keep the hospital that I go to or do I want to keep the drug coverage I have? And many people are finding they can't find any plan that will let them keep everything they have now--in spite of the President's promise. We are hearing more and more stories about fraud and identity theft across the country related to the health care Web site, including a Senate staff member who was signing up. It asked for his bank number and PIN number, and he called the helpline. He had to wait a long period of time to get through, as has been the experience for many Americans, and they said: No, that is not the regular Web site. That must be some kind of a scam trying to fraudulently take your information. People are seeing higher copays and deductibles. The average deductible now is over $5,000 for people in bronze plans. That is what is continuing to happen with this health care law. October was just about the Web site. January is going to be about real people, their lives and their ability to get affordable quality care from the doctors they know and trust. The Obama administration made a lot of promises about this law. The administration has known for months--I believe the administration has known for years that many of the promises were not true. They knew people would lose their doctors, and they knew millions of people would lose their health insurance plans. But instead of leveling with the American people, the White House chose to mislead them. It continues to mislead them today on one important issue after another, and the people have seen through it. Washington Post, Tuesday, December 17, just yesterday: ``Obama's approval ratings plummet. Poll results worrisome for Democrats looking to the midterm elections.'' A respected group, politifacts.com, whose role is sorting out the truth in politics, has come up with their lie of the year, and they attribute their lie of the year for 2013 to President Obama: ``If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.'' That is the lie of the year to the American people. So it is no surprise, then, that the President's approval ratings continue to plummet. I looked at a decision this administration made very recently, a decision to delay next year's open enrollment season until after the midterm elections. To me, this is a blatant political move--a blatant political move that they snuck out the announcement just days before Thanksgiving. So what kind of announcement is the administration going to try to sneak out now, just before Christmas? Well, the enrollment period for insurance coverage in 2015 was set to begin October 15, 2014, and then end in December. Now it won't begin until November 15. Why in the world would they need to delay it for a month? Enrollment in the government health insurance exchange has been a disaster, but the administration says it has fixed all the problems. So why do they want to delay it for a month? What is the difference between October 15 and November 15? I believe it is because the administration is in a panic mode, and it will do anything it can to hide the cost of the health care law on the American people--hide the skyrocketing costs. What they have done is they have moved it from a couple of weeks before the election until a couple of weeks after election day 2014. The American people don't need more lies. What they need from their President is for the President to come clean about the terrible effects of the law. The fact is that many Americans can't keep their coverage, can't keep their doctors, and they can't afford this law. The Associated Press put out a poll the other day. The headline was ``Health Law Seen as Eroding Coverage.'' The health care is eroding coverage. According to the poll, 69 percent of people say their premiums will be going up and 59 percent say their deductibles and copayments will be increasing. People can't afford those kinds of price increases--this whole redistribution of assets and wealth on the American people. People were told by this President that their health care costs were going to go down. Instead, they are seeing them go up. The Obama administration doesn't want people learning about their next increases right before the 2014 election, so they are trying to hide the truth. That is why today Senator Alexander, Senator Enzi, and I plan to introduce a bill to give the American people the transparency they deserve when they are making important health care decisions for their families. We are calling this bill the Premium Disclosure Act, and it will do a couple of things. First, the bill sets the exchange's opening date of October 15, 2014, in statute so that Democrats can't change it to meet their political goals around an election. Second, the bill says the Obama administration has to make premiums and cost-sharing requirements public 30 days before the open enrollment begins, so people will have this important information in mid- September, making it easier for families to budget and to plan. The Department of Health and Human Services has previously said it did not have this authority. That is why they said we need to wait until October 1 to find out what premiums would be this year. This bill would specifically give the administration the authority, so they will have no more excuses for hiding health insurance cost increases from the American people. Americans wanted a few very simple things from health care reform. They wanted better access to care. Washington Democrats gave them less access. They wanted lower costs, but Washington Democrats gave them higher costs. They wanted help. Washington Democrats have caused them harm. This bill will help add some transparency and shed light on things the Obama administration does not want the American people to see. The President's health care law has been a failure. It cannot be fixed just by delaying one more part or by sending out the spin doctors one more time or by having one more press conference. I hope when we return after the New Year that President Obama and Democrats in Congress will be ready to sit down with Republicans to talk about real bipartisan solutions that put patients and families first.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor, as I have frequently since the health care law was passed, as a doctor who has practiced medicine in Wyoming for a quarter of a century, taking care of people, providing low-cost blood screenings through the Wyoming Health Fair, of which I was the medical director. I was back in Wyoming last week talking to folks about their health care and their concerns. With the end of the year rapidly approaching, Americans are gathering with family and friends to celebrate the holidays, to count their blessings. But from what I heard last weekend in Wyoming and on a telephone townhall meeting Monday night, very few people are thankful for the President's health care law. I met yesterday with the Wyoming insurance commissioner. Fewer than 1,000 people have been able to sign up, but thousands have had their insurance canceled under the law. So many more people are suffering because of the law than people who are potentially able to benefit. This law was forced down the throats of the American people, supported unanimously by the Democrats in this body. It is continuing to disrupt people's lives and to cause them very real harm. After a year of false starts and failures, what we have seen is that the President's health care law is nothing more than a collection of deception, delays, and disappointments. If you look at the headlines, the biggest disappointment was the launch of the healthcare.gov Web site in October. It was a total disaster. But it really is just the tip of the iceberg. The Web site failures are what people have seen across the country. That is the most visible, and it has obviously been the cause of concerns and jokes by the late-night comedians. But the real damage is going to start on January 1--damage to people's lives. This was just about a computer screen. Below this tip of the iceberg is what people are actually noticing at home. They are paying higher premiums, and I am hearing that around the State of Wyoming; canceled coverage--thousands in Wyoming but over 5 million, I understand by last count, across the country. And we don't even know how many have been canceled in the States of Illinois, Texas, and Ohio. But we know that more than 5 million people have lost their coverage. People are finding out they can't keep their doctor. We are seeing that with seniors on Medicare, and we are seeing that with children who are going for cancer care. We are finding that people are having a harder time finding a doctor or even having to make choices as they go to the Web site: Well, do I want to keep my doctor or do I want to keep the hospital that I go to or do I want to keep the drug coverage I have? And many people are finding they can't find any plan that will let them keep everything they have now--in spite of the President's promise. We are hearing more and more stories about fraud and identity theft across the country related to the health care Web site, including a Senate staff member who was signing up. It asked for his bank number and PIN number, and he called the helpline. He had to wait a long period of time to get through, as has been the experience for many Americans, and they said: No, that is not the regular Web site. That must be some kind of a scam trying to fraudulently take your information. People are seeing higher copays and deductibles. The average deductible now is over $5,000 for people in bronze plans. That is what is continuing to happen with this health care law. October was just about the Web site. January is going to be about real people, their lives and their ability to get affordable quality care from the doctors they know and trust. The Obama administration made a lot of promises about this law. The administration has known for months--I believe the administration has known for years that many of the promises were not true. They knew people would lose their doctors, and they knew millions of people would lose their health insurance plans. But instead of leveling with the American people, the White House chose to mislead them. It continues to mislead them today on one important issue after another, and the people have seen through it. Washington Post, Tuesday, December 17, just yesterday: ``Obama's approval ratings plummet. Poll results worrisome for Democrats looking to the midterm elections.'' A respected group, politifacts.com, whose role is sorting out the truth in politics, has come up with their lie of the year, and they attribute their lie of the year for 2013 to President Obama: ``If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.'' That is the lie of the year to the American people. So it is no surprise, then, that the President's approval ratings continue to plummet. I looked at a decision this administration made very recently, a decision to delay next year's open enrollment season until after the midterm elections. To me, this is a blatant political move--a blatant political move that they snuck out the announcement just days before Thanksgiving. So what kind of announcement is the administration going to try to sneak out now, just before Christmas? Well, the enrollment period for insurance coverage in 2015 was set to begin October 15, 2014, and then end in December. Now it won't begin until November 15. Why in the world would they need to delay it for a month? Enrollment in the government health insurance exchange has been a disaster, but the administration says it has fixed all the problems. So why do they want to delay it for a month? What is the difference between October 15 and November 15? I believe it is because the administration is in a panic mode, and it will do anything it can to hide the cost of the health care law on the American people--hide the skyrocketing costs. What they have done is they have moved it from a couple of weeks before the election until a couple of weeks after election day 2014. The American people don't need more lies. What they need from their President is for the President to come clean about the terrible effects of the law. The fact is that many Americans can't keep their coverage, can't keep their doctors, and they can't afford this law. The Associated Press put out a poll the other day. The headline was ``Health Law Seen as Eroding Coverage.'' The health care is eroding coverage. According to the poll, 69 percent of people say their premiums will be going up and 59 percent say their deductibles and copayments will be increasing. People can't afford those kinds of price increases--this whole redistribution of assets and wealth on the American people. People were told by this President that their health care costs were going to go down. Instead, they are seeing them go up. The Obama administration doesn't want people learning about their next increases right before the 2014 election, so they are trying to hide the truth. That is why today Senator Alexander, Senator Enzi, and I plan to introduce a bill to give the American people the transparency they deserve when they are making important health care decisions for their families. We are calling this bill the Premium Disclosure Act, and it will do a couple of things. First, the bill sets the exchange's opening date of October 15, 2014, in statute so that Democrats can't change it to meet their political goals around an election. Second, the bill says the Obama administration has to make premiums and cost-sharing requirements public 30 days before the open enrollment begins, so people will have this important information in mid- September, making it easier for families to budget and to plan. The Department of Health and Human Services has previously said it did not have this authority. That is why they said we need to wait until October 1 to find out what premiums would be this year. This bill would specifically give the administration the authority, so they will have no more excuses for hiding health insurance cost increases from the American people. Americans wanted a few very simple things from health care reform. They wanted better access to care. Washington Democrats gave them less access. They wanted lower costs, but Washington Democrats gave them higher costs. They wanted help. Washington Democrats have caused them harm. This bill will help add some transparency and shed light on things the Obama administration does not want the American people to see. The President's health care law has been a failure. It cannot be fixed just by delaying one more part or by sending out the spin doctors one more time or by having one more press conference. I hope when we return after the New Year that President Obama and Democrats in Congress will be ready to sit down with Republicans to talk about real bipartisan solutions that put patients and families first.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak until the top of the hour.

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BARRASSO. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today, as I have over the past several years, to talk about issues affecting this country. I know there is a nomination we are discussing on the floor, and I have concerns about the issues related to that nominee and the way that nomination has been brought forward because it was done by what I believe to be an abuse-of-power move in a way that resulted in voting in the middle of the night, discussions in the middle of the night--all, in my opinion, to distract from the disaster of the Obama health care law. The Obama health care law continues to affect people all across the country. What we saw on October 1 in the great debacle of the rollout of the Web site was really just about a Web site on October 1. But come January 1, it will be about real people who have lost their insurance who are going to be hurt personally in terms of their own health by this terrible law. So I come to the floor, as I have week after week since the law passed, to talk about concerns I have as a doctor, someone who has practiced medicine in Wyoming for 24 years as an orthopedic surgeon, taking care of people from around the State, and someone who as a medical doctor was director of a program called the Wyoming Health Fairs aimed at giving people low-cost blood screens, having health fairs people can attend from around the State where they can check their blood results and visit with doctors and nurses and others in the community about issues of heart disease, diabetes, all aimed at preventing disease, early detection of problems, and lowering the cost of their care. So I had great interest when this health care law was proposed and while watching it unfold. The concerns I had as it was passed continue today, and I think more and more Americans are seeing that those concerns are being realized in their own lives. And that is what it is about--people's lives. The Web site failures are just the tip of the iceberg. What people are seeing now all across the country are higher premiums, and there are stories rampant around the country. I still recall the President of the United States saying that by the end of his first term, insurance premiums would be down $2,500 per family. Instead, families are paying much more for health insurance. There are concerns, obviously, because of canceled coverage. Around the country, over 5 million folks, I understand from recent accounts, have received letters saying that they have lost their insurance, that their insurance will be canceled effective January 1. The President promised: ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.'' But now we are seeing that many people aren't keeping their doctors. Even though they like their doctors and want to keep their doctors, they can't. There are issues of fraud and identity theft that we are hearing about on a daily basis. The chief of staff of one of the Members of the Senate was applying on the Obama health care Web site, the government Web site, trying to get insurance just this Monday, and it sure looked like the Federal Web site and he thought he was on the Federal Web site and was putting in information. Then it goes to a screen where they wanted to know his bank account number and his PIN number. He said: This can't be right. He called the help line and spent over an hour on the phone, and they ultimately said: No. Get off of that. It can't be the Federal Government Web site. Get off of it. He was focused enough to think, this can't be right, but the fraud is going to be rampant, we know that, and identity theft as well. And then we are seeing huge problems with higher copays and deductibles. I have with me a couple articles. Wednesday's Wall Street Journal has their recent poll numbers. ``Health Law Hurts President Politically.'' The subheadline is that the disapproval rate of Obama's job performance rises. ``The disapproval rate of the President's job performance now rises to an all-time high of 54 percent,'' it says, ``even as Americans are upbeat on the economy.'' So it is not the economy that has people so disappointed and disapproving of the President. Let me read a couple paragraphs because this is about the President of the United States and what we would want in a President of the United States in terms of credibility with the American people. The Federal health-care law is becoming a heavier political burden for President Barack Obama and his party, despite increased confidence in the economy and the public's own generally upbeat sense of well-being, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests. They go through how the poll was conducted, but people across the country believe the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is a true reflection of what is happening nationwide. It says: Disapproval of Mr. Obama's job performance has hit an all- time high in the poll, at 54 percent, amid the flawed rollout of the health law. Half of those polled now consider the law a bad idea, also a record high. This is a big-time survey of 1,000 adults, and this is really a disturbing part for us as a nation and should sadden all America: The survey of 1,000 adults conducted between Dec. 4 and Dec. 8 found a sharp erosion since January in many of the attributes--honesty, leadership, ability to handle a crisis . . . These are abilities we want in a President. We want a President who is honest and who is perceived by the public as honest. We want a President who can handle a crisis and is perceived by the public as being able to handle a crisis. But they say there has been ``a sharp erosion since last January in many of the attributes--honesty, leadership, ability to handle a crisis--that had kept Mr. Obama aloft through the economic and political turmoil of his first term.'' The poll goes on and asks: In terms of the impact of the President's health care law, is this going to have a positive impact on you and your family? Fewer than one out of eight people in the country today believes this health care law will have a positive impact on them and their family. We are changing the entire health care system of the country, and only one out of eight people believes it is actually going to help them? The performance of the President is considered to be very bad, a significant disapproval, and it is because of the health care law. People look at this and they say: What does this mean to me? How is this going to affect my life? Those are the issues we talked about here. People are being hit with the incredible increased costs. They say: Well, there are some policies that may be a little bit cheaper, the so-called bronze policies. So the New York Times took a look at that. Again, these are articles from just this week. This is from Monday, December 9: ``On Health Exchanges, Premiums May Be Low, but Other Costs Can Be High.'' This is by Robert Pear this Monday, a well-known writer who does his research and gets the facts. He says, ``But as consumers dig into the details . . . ''--boy, that is a key phrase because I believe that so many people who voted for this health care law never looked into the details, didn't know what it meant, didn't know what was going to be in it because Nancy Pelosi famously said: First you have to pass it before you get to find out what is in it. Well, Americans are now looking at it, digging into it. Robert Pear in the New York Times said: But as consumers dig into the details, they are finding that the deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs are often much higher than what is typical in employer-sponsored health plans. So what they actually have to pay out of their pockets is much higher than in employer-sponsored health plans. Well, people really care about what they have to pay personally for things. The same day, the Wall Street Journal, Monday, December 9, page 1. ``High Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock''-- the same information that we have seen there in the New York Times. It says the average individual deductible for what is called the bronze plan on the exchange, the plan I was talking about a little earlier, which is the lowest priced average deductible is $5,081 a year, according to a new report on insurance offerings in 34 of the 36 States that rely on the federally--Washington-run--online marketplace. That is 42 percent higher than the average deductible last year on plans that were purchased. This is before the Federal law took place. ``High Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock.'' I heard the President say the States that have done it have done it very well. It is astonishing. When you turn to the second part of this article, page A6 says ``Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock.'' What about the States doing their own plan? The headline above that: ``Health-Site Snafus Plague Maryland,'' a State that has decided to do their own Web site. This is from Monday: Maryland is struggling to fix its troubled health-insurance website more than two months after it opened, showing how technology woes are affecting more than just the federal system. We see it is not just the Web site--one article about the bad Web site, the next article is about higher copays and deductibles. Interestingly, the official in charge of Maryland's insurance marketplace resigned after criticism of her decision to take a vacation in the Cayman Islands during Thanksgiving week. New statistics released Friday showed just a trickle of customers signing up for private coverage in the State. It is interesting that States are having problems and the Federal Government is having problems. People wanted to keep their insurance. They wanted to keep their insurance. They liked their insurance. I talked to a woman--a rancher in Wyoming--at the Farm Bureau meeting. She lost her insurance. Her insurance worked very well for her and her family, but she lost it because it didn't meet President Obama's criteria of the 10 different standards that had to be met. She knows me and called me Doc because I had known her, and I am a doctor in Wyoming. She said it is interesting that the reason she lost her insurance is because it didn't include maternity coverage. She said, Doc, I had a hysterectomy. I don't need maternity coverage. She said, I know I don't need maternity coverage, but apparently President Obama believes she needs maternity coverage. The Democrats in the Senate believe she needs maternity coverage. The question is, Who is the best judge for you and your family? Is it the government or the Democrats who believe they know better than you do or the freedom-loving Americans who believe they can make their own decisions about their lives and their families and what insurance they want or do not want. People wanted to keep their insurance. They weren't allowed to, but the President said they could. Time and time again, the President said people could keep their insurance if they liked their insurance. I think that is one of the major reasons the President's credibility has dropped. As a matter of fact, there is a nonpartisan fact checker called PolitiFact, and each year they go through lots of comments and lots of statements that are made, and they came out last night with their lie of the year. They do this every year--the lie of the year. The lie of the year that came out from PolitiFact for the year 2013 was: If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. We all know who said it-- the President of the United States. They go on to say he didn't just say it once. We counted dozens of times that President Barack Obama said if people like their health plan, they can keep it. They go on to say: It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America's health insurance system. ``If you like your health plan, you can keep it,'' President Barack Obama said many times, but the promise was impossible to keep. This fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized the President's breezy assurances were wrong and, therefore, they have given it the lie of the year. People saw this coming. Republicans saw this coming. My colleague from Wyoming, Senator Mike Enzi, saw this coming. That is why he came to the floor years ago and said: People are going to lose their coverage. People are going to lose it. He brought a resolution to the floor because he actually reads the Federal Register, and he saw the regulations that came out. He came to this floor with legislation to say: Wait a second. If you truly believe people can keep their coverage, you have to adopt this piece of legislation so people truly can keep their coverage. Yet we saw Republicans vote with Senator Enzi, saying let people keep their coverage. We saw Democrats say, forget it, Senator Enzi, we don't believe you are right. The President was wrong; Senator Enzi was right. There was a letter to the editor in the Powell Tribune in Powell, WY, with the headline ``Enzi saw ACA impacts beforehand, shows value of Senator Enzi.'' Dear Editor: Fox News had a very interesting and informative program Tuesday evening Nov. 6 on ``The Kelly Files with Megyn Kelly.'' As anyone who watches Fox News knows, they are covering the beginning effects of the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, as it is being implemented. Megyn Kelly began her program stating she had a special guest who had predicted three-and-one-half years ago almost exactly what will happen when the ObamaCare law guess into effect this October. Her special guest was our own Wyoming senior Senator Mike Enzi and he had made his predictions in a speech on the Senate floor three-and-one- half years ago. He was then called a fearmonger by the Democrats and a radical rightwinger. Senator Enzi was probably one of a very few elected officials who had actually read the bill. Senator Enzi reads all the bills. He understands the bills and the implications and then reads the Federal Register so he knows what is in them. He then brings to the floor thoughtful pieces of legislation to actually make things better for the American people, not worse. What we are now seeing is that people can't keep their insurance. They are losing their insurance, their doctor, and losing their hospitals. It is interesting in terms of being able to not even keep your doctor, not being able to go to the hospital you prefer. I would like to talk for a few seconds about the doctor-patient relationship and why when the President says: ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period,'' that actually caused comfort for people. But, again, that is another broken promise. It is not necessarily ranked by PolitiFact to the level of, ``If you like your coverage, you can keep your coverage,'' because people have gotten the letters. Next year we will see more and more people who will not be able to keep their doctor. As a doctor, I wrote an article that appeared on Wednesday of this week in Investors Business Daily called ``ObamaCare Disrupts the Delicate Relationship Between Patient and Doctor.'' I would like to share parts of it now specifically because this past weekend on one of the Sunday talk shows Rahm Emanuel's brother Ezekiel Emanuel, who was one of the architects of the President's health care law, which was written behind closed doors, was on one of his talk shows responding to a question about the President's comment, ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.'' Can you really keep your doctor? What I wrote in this column December 11 was: A central architect of the President's health care law admitted this week that the often repeated promise that ``if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor'' simply isn't true. Instead, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel explained that if you like your doctor, you will simply need to pay more to keep your doctor. As a physician, I know firsthand how this will hurt many Americans. I write about how families look to doctors as trusted friends, confidants, counselors, and turn to them for advice in making life-and- death decisions. In Wyoming, patients have included me in graduations, weddings, and asked me to serve as a pallbearer at funerals. They have asked me to pray with them, referee family disputes, and provide reassurance when a doctor they didn't know was called in to consult. Norman Rockwell's painting ``Doctor and Doll'' tells the story. A little girl holds up the doll as the trusted family doctor listens with a stethoscope. A caring and compassionate physician takes the time to reassure a concerned little girl. The doctor-patient relationship is a very special bond. It requires faith and trust for a patient to allow me to cut into their body to remove a tumor, to replace a wornout joint, to fix a broken bone, to repair a torn ligament, and above all else, to do no harm. The President knew of that special relationship between people and their doctors. That is why when he was trying to gain support for the health care law, he made a clear and simple promise to the American people. The President said: ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period.'' Now people all across the country are finding out that they can't keep their doctor. The same law that has caused millions of Americans to lose the health insurance that worked for them is now causing them to lose their doctor. People who are shopping for insurance on government exchanges are being forced to purchase insurance for things they don't want, don't need, and will never use. To keep costs down, many of these policies limit the doctors and hospitals that patients can use. Some of the Nation's premier hospitals--including the Mayo Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center--are excluded from many insurance exchanges in their networks. Some of the best children's hospitals in the country are also excluded from the exchanges. This means a child with cancer may lose access to his or her doctor and their specialty hospital. Why? Because of the law. In New Hampshire, 10 of the State's 26 hospitals are excluded from the only carrier that offers insurance in the exchange. The head of the medical staff at one of the excluded hospitals in New Hampshire has learned that her plan does not even let her, the chief of staff of the hospital, seek treatment at her own hospital. The situation can be equally bad for seniors on Medicare. Thousands of doctors caring for seniors on Medicare Advantage have been dropped from their networks. Those Medicare patients are now going to be challenged to find a new doctor to take care of them. The President's health care law is making it harder for doctors as well as for patients. Doctors know their patients. They know their health history, they know their lives, and doctors value the personal relationship as much as the patient does. People become doctors in the first place to take care of their patients. Even if someone is able to keep their doctor, they will not necessarily be able to spend as much time with them as they might like to. That is because nearly two-thirds of doctors expect to have to spend more time on paperwork under the requirements of the law. This isn't at all what the President promised the American people. People all across America put their faith and their trust in Barack Obama when they elected him President. It is the same kind of faith and trust they have in their own doctor. When patients lose trust in their doctor, as citizens they are now losing faith in their President, it is extremely difficult to regain that trust. So I continue to hear from my patients in Wyoming. They have always had my home phone number. They are anxious. They are angry. They know what they want from the health care reform. They want access to quality affordable care. That is not what they got with this law. Now many face losing the doctor who has always been there for them. If President Obama wants to regain the trust of the American people, he will sit down with Republicans to deliver reforms that will help all Americans and fully protect the doctor-patient relationship. After all, President Obama has his own doctor at the White House, a doctor who is dedicated to the President's care. I am sure the President values his relationship just as much as other Americans value their relationship with their doctor. I continue to come to the floor. I see my colleagues are arriving. I would call their attention to this issue, as they say we have to make the coverage for all these things, they feel they know what is best for American patients, we need to provide psychiatric insurance an coverage, and I have voted to provide parity for psychiatric care, but yesterday's New York Times article by Robert Pear, ``Fewer Psychiatrists Seen Taking Health Insurance.'' So the insurance the President is providing for people doesn't actually help them. It maybe makes the President feel better, but it is not helping people get care. The President has been very confused and used the word ``coverage'' when he should have been talking about actual health care for people, providing physicians to take care of them so people can get what they need in health care reform, the care they need, from a doctor they choose, at lowers costs. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, the matter before us is that of a nominee to be Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for a term expiring July 2018. This nominee was asked to serve as a Commissioner by President Obama and was confirmed by the Senate by a voice vote in December 2010 for a term ending July 2013. While her term expired at that date, she can continue to serve until the end of this congressional session, December 2013, so she is still in the position, continuing to serve. I have gone through her entire biography, and I would have some questions if I were to have an opportunity to visit as a Senator today with this nominee to be Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I would like to ask the nominee if she is willing to forgo Federal employee insurance, which she currently has, to go onto the insurance now forced upon most of America through the President's health care law. Would she, who is now seeking nomination and seeking confirmation, be willing to do what Americans are being asked all around the country to do, people who received letters that said: Sorry, your insurance isn't good enough. Sorry, you can't keep your insurance regardless of what the President may have promised. What would this nominee say? Is the President's health care law good enough for her? Is what the President is promising to Americans good enough for her? I shouldn't even say ``promising''--offering, if they can get it, depending on whether the Web site is working on a given day, whether they can afford it, whether they want it, whether it works for them. Is this something this nominee would think is a good idea for her? Because, of course, she is in position as Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I would like to ask the nominee regarding her views of employers who are being forced to change health care plans offered to their employees as a result of the Democrat- mandated and passed on party-line votes Obama health care law. What are her views on employers being forced to change health care plans offered to employees because of what this Senate body did? I would also like to ask the nominee whether she believes an employer who requires some of his or her employees to join the exchange and is OK about exempting other employees--whether that would be a violation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission laws. Does she believe an employer who requires some of his employees to join the exchange while exempting others--would that be a violation of the laws. That is what the majority leader of the Senate has done. Do the laws not apply to the majority leader? Can he decide one way or the other? We have heard his explanation. I know the Washington Post gave him three Pinocchios, meaning there is a considerable amount of untruth in his explanation. But what about this nominee before us today? I would also like to hear her thoughts regarding whether people in power should have the right to change rules at any time in a manner that restricts the rights of those whom the rules were intended to protect because that is what has happened on this floor of the Senate in the last couple of weeks. A group broke the rules to change the rules in a way that has denied the minority rights that had been protected for centuries. So I would be interested in hearing what the nominee has to say about that. It is interesting because the facts that have been brought forth on the floor by the Senate majority leader regarding the filibuster have actually been described as fraudulent: ``Democrats' Filibuster Fraud.'' On November 21, majority leader Harry Reid broke his promise not to employ the nuclear option when he and Senate Democrats eliminated the filibuster on nominations. They did so based on what Senator Hatch once described as a ``filibuster fraud.'' Orrin Hatch, a longstanding Member of this body, probably knows the rules better than any. I believe they did it in an attempt to divert attention away from this ObamaCare nightmare--people faced with higher premiums, canceled coverage, people finding out they can't keep their doctor, fraud and identity theft which is going on even until today and I think is going to continue to get worse in the future, and higher copays and deductibles. One of our Senate colleague's staffers was trying to sign up for insurance on Monday, I understand was on a Web site that pretty much looked identical to the government Web site, and what he found was it took him to a page where they asked for his bank account number and his PIN number. I think everyone agrees that is not part of the health care Web site. This is a staff member who works for the Senate and found himself taken through the computer--I should say the broken Web site, easy to maneuver and manipulate--it took him to a page asking for his bank account number and his PIN number. He then called the help line, spent several hours on hold waiting to talk to people, and they said: Just get off of that Web site. The folks he was talking to even seemed surprised to know that he logged in to what he thought was the correct Web site and what looked identical to the government Web site, but yet there was a problem there. So I believe what we are seeing is an effort to divert attention away from the ObamaCare nightmare and ensure that the circuit court of appeals will be a rubberstamp for the President's agenda. And what has happened? The Washington Post looked at the comments by the Senate majority leader, who on November 21 said: In the history of the Republic, there have been 168 filibusters of executive and judicial nominations. Half of them have occurred during the Obama Administration . . . The Washington Post, which looked at it, said: Leader Reid's figures confused cloture motions, which are requests to end debate, with filibusters, the response to those requests. So just making a request isn't a filibuster; it is actually making a filibuster response to the motion. They said: This was despite the clear admonition of the June Congressional Research Service Report that cloture motions don't correspond with filibusters. Apparently Senator Reid did not have a chance to read that or wanted to ignore it. It didn't fit the scenario or the story that he was trying to weave. They went on to say: Since the majority leader files nearly all cloture motions, Senator Reid himself created the very statistic that he relied upon to force a rule change. Senator Reid himself by filing all these cloture motions, he is the one who created the very statistic that he relied upon to force a rules change. Many of these, the Washington Post reports, were clearly unnecessary. In fact they say 32 percent of all cloture motions in the past 4\1/2\ years were withdrawn before a vote. Even the fact checker of the Washington Post rejected the majority leader's claim. They said: But we especially find it hard to get past CRS's admonition that the data in its report should not be used to calculate the number of filibusters, as Reid's office has done. They have given him a couple of Pinocchios on that one too. It is fascinating that the majority leader of the Senate receives Pinocchio after Pinocchio in the Washington Post for continuing to distort or tell his version of a story which is just not true at all. I believe all of this is in an effort to distract people from all of the issues that are damning and hurting the President's standing in the eyes of the American people. It is interesting. You do not have to go too far back in the newspapers. You just go to Wednesday, December 11, yesterday. The Wall Street Journal, page 4, ``Poll: Health Law Hurts president Politically.'' The American people know this is the law that the President forced through, a party-line vote, in the middle of the night, Christmas--and it looks like we may be here Christmas again this year, because of an unwillingness of the Democrats to work together to accept Republican ideas, to talk with their colleagues. Let's see the subheadline here, ``Obama's Job-Performanace Disapproval Rate Rises to All-Time High.'' The President's disapproval rate of his job performance rises to an all-time high of 54 percent. Then it says ``Even As Americans Upbeat On Economy.'' So the President is at an all time high of his disapproval even at a time when people from an economic standpoint believe that things are not as bad as they may be. Why is it? Because of the health care law. People all across the country--the numbers are 5 million now who have lost their insurance, gotten letters from their insurance companies saying sorry, you have lost your insurance. It might have worked well for you. I talked to folks at home in Wyoming, a ranch family. They have insurance. It works for them. It is what they wanted, it is what they had for many years, but they found out it didn't qualify because it was not good enough. It is interesting to hear the President say better insurance. Not better for them. More expensive, more things to cover that they don't ever need. The reason they lost their insurance is because it didn't fit the President's 10-point criteria. It didn't include maternity coverage. A woman who knows I am a doctor, knows I practiced medicine in Wyoming for 24 years--and I talked to her at the Wyoming Farm Bureau meeting in Laramie a couple of weeks ago--said: I have had a hysterectomy. She said: Doctor, you know somebody who has had a hysterectomy doesn't need maternity coverage. They are not going to have more babies. So she lost insurance that the family has had. It worked for the family, and they could afford it. They had it included in their budget, and they lost it because she doesn't have maternity coverage, because she has had a hysterectomy. She had insurance that worked for her. Who does the President think he is, to say that he knows better than she does, what is right for her and for her family? That is why the President is being hurt politically. It is the health law. It is the mandates on the American people. It is the President and the Democrats in this body saying: We know better than you do. We know what your kids need, we know what your family needs, we know what works in your life. I will tell you, the President does not know. He has no idea what works for these people at home in Wyoming and that they have made intelligent choices, thoughtful choices. They know what works for them. He doesn't know their lives, and he doesn't know their needs. His disapproval rate--not surprising to me--is at an all time high, and it is well deserved because people are being faced with not just the Web site failures, which drew attention to this, that I believe made the Secretary of Health and Human Services the laughing stock of America because of her comments and how they played forth on the comedy shows, but also and more important, because of what is below the tip of the iceberg, the higher premiums. My friend in Wyoming has found that what she needs to do in terms of the insurance that the President said she needs--it is going to cause their premium to skyrocket. She is going to be forced to buy insurance because the law says all Americans need to buy insurance. She is going to be forced to buy insurance that really they don't need, they don't want, they are never ever going to use, they cannot afford, and it is money not going to be used for other things--for books for the kids, for food for the table, for things around the house. They are going to lose that opportunity. That is what this is all about. That is why the President's numbers have dropped so significantly. It is interesting when you go through these statistics, findings--and this is a combined poll from the Wall Street Journal and NBC news--the health care law, whether it was a good idea or bad idea. According to this poll: bad idea, 50 percent, good idea, 34 percent--50 percent bad, 34 percent good. Then they say what is the impact of this health care law on your family? That is what people wonder about. What does it mean to them? What does this mean to them personally? Because it was interesting. On the exit polling from the Presidential election last year with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, people across the country believed at that time that in response to the question of ``cares for someone like me,'' Barack Obama did much better, scored much higher than Mitt Romney. Now the President is underwater because people are saying he doesn't care about me; he doesn't know about me; doesn't care about me; is not thinking about me, is thinking about his legacy but not thinking what I am going to have to pay in premiums; not thinking about my insurance being canceled; not thinking about me not able to keep my doctor; not thinking about fraud and identity theft; not thinking about the higher copays and deductibles. Right now, in terms of the poll that was in yesterday's Wall Street Journal by NBC news, whether this was going to have a positive or a negative impact on people's lives, fewer than 1 in 8 Americans believe that this health care law is going to have a positive impact on them and their families. Fewer than 1 in 8. It is astonishing that fewer than 1 in 8 people think that this health care law is going to have a positive impact for them and their family. Yet it was crammed down the throats of all Americans, forcing them to face all of these issues and costs related to that. The poll shows the President's disapproval at the highest rate ever, 54 percent, going back from the time he was elected. In terms of how you look at this-- start reading the article. The federal health-care law is becoming a heavier political burden for President Barack Obama and his party, despite increased confidence in the economy and the public's own generally upbeat sense of well-being, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests. Disapproval of Mr. Obama's job performance hit an all-time high in the poll, at 54%, amid the flawed rollout of the health law. Half of those polled now consider the law a bad idea, also a record high. There was the flawed roll out and Web sites can be fixed. The Web site can be fixed--and that is why the Web site failure is only the tip of the iceberg. What has really gotten people mad is the 5 million letters, and we don't even know how many letters went out in Illinois, Ohio, Texas. We don't have those numbers yet. So the numbers of folks who lost their health care coverage that worked for them, that they liked, that number is, I believe, going to be higher than 5 million. So this is going to continue to roll out with people showing huge disappointment. I expect the President's popularity to fall even further. I think it is going to get even worse come January 1 as people start to go to a doctor and find out that maybe they think they bought insurance through the health care Web site and find out that they actually do not have it. We have people I have talked to that have put in all the information. They spent hours, but the Web site went down. They came back for more hours but don't have confirmation yet. They really do not know if they have insurance yet. They would like to know. They would like to see assurance. They would like to have confidence their government can get something right. They do not see it now. They don't see the President doing what he promised. The President was on television with President Clinton, at the Clinton World Summit in New York, just 3 or 4 days before the Web site was unveiled, and there was the President sitting with former President Clinton saying that this was going to be easier to use than Amazon. Cheaper than your direct phone bill, and if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Did the President really believe that or was he so detached, so disconnected from the reality of what is happening in this country that he was not even overseeing his job. This is his signature achievement. Yet it seems like he ignored the implementation process. For those in this body who served as Governors, as chief executives of States, as the Presiding Officer of the Senate has done, you never let that happen. You might have tested it for yourself: What is it going to look like? I am curious, what happens when people sign on? How does it work? But just to push ``go'' and have this blind confidence that everything is going to be fine and not know and 3 or 4 days before on a world stage saying: Oh, easier than Amazon, I think is very distressing to many people. That is why the President's performance shows such high disapproval, 54 percent. That is why, according to the Wall Street Journal poll and NBC news, the health law is hurting the President politically. This is not just a survey of a couple of people. This survey is of 1,000 adults. It was conducted between December 4 and December 8. What it did is it found a sharp erosion, they say, a sharp erosion since January in many of the attributes of a President. What are the attributes you would like to have in a President? What would a nation look to in a President? Attributes that say: This is what we want in our President. Honesty--that is what you would like to have, a President who is honest. Leadership ability to handle a crisis. They say that had kept President Obama aloft through the economic and political turmoil of his first term, but now it is not there anymore. The feeling about the President regarding his own honesty has dropped precipitously. You do not want our country to have a President who the people think is not honest, but that is where we are right now. I will tell you, he brought it upon himself and he did it intentionally, he did it deliberately and he did it by looking into that camera and intentionally misleading the American people about his health care law--not just in the lead-up to passing the law but continued all the way through. What does the President say? He said if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance, period. It was his punctuation of that sentence that said there is nothing after that. He said if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period. He has continued to say that. It was interesting, even after the whole debacle, the letters going out, so many people finding their coverage had been canceled, the White House Web site continued with a video of the President saying, ``If you like your coverage, you can keep your coverage, period.'' If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period. Is it any surprise that the American people no longer find the President trustworthy, honest? Is it a surprise, then, that the President finds that the health law is hurting him politically? Is it a surprise that the disapproval of his performance is now at an all-time high? That is what we are dealing with in this country, and yet the President continues to go forth and say, are the Republican ideas? We have had idea after idea. We tried to visit with the President about those ideas. He wants to hear nothing. He wants to hear nothing. He wants his talking points and he doesn't really have a clear understanding of what damage he has done to America with this law that has hurt so many families across the country and continues to cause pain and suffering and anxiety, and as a result anger, and as a result the health law hurts the President politically. Those are the issues that are in front of us. Those are the issues that are in front of us. I have a letter from a gentleman who lives in Cody, WY, that I want to read and share. This came in a couple of days ago online. For the most part people in Wyoming know me as Dr. Barrasso. I have treated many of them. I have been involved with the Wyoming health fairs and taking low-cost blood screenings to people all around the Cowboy State. I still attend the fairs and visit the small communities. We did a poll there about why people go to health fairs. The No. 2 reason they go is for their health, and the No. 1 reason is to socialize and see other people in their community. I know the Presiding Officer has seen similar things in his home State when he goes to activities that people go to, and they want to see one another. This email is by a gentleman who wrote to me and knows about my activities at the health fairs and as a doctor. He said: Just got a quote from my insurance agent on Obama care insurance. From $860 I currently spend per month for my family of 4, to $2,400. All with the low deductible of $10,000 per person per year. That is the other issue: Higher copays and deductibles. This is a big part of what is happening with this health care law. I mean, it is interesting. This is Monday's Wall Street Journal, dated December 9: ``Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock.'' That is what my friend from Cody, WY, is finding after being hit with the higher deductibles. I will share some of the things the Wall Street Journal said and then get back to the letter from my friend in Cody. It says: The average individual deductible for what is called a bronze plan on the exchange--the lowest priced coverage--is $5,081 per person a year, according to a new report on insurance offerings in 34 of the 36 states that rely on the federally run online marketplace. That is 42 percent higher than the average deductible of $3,589 for an individually purchased plan in 2013 before much of the federal law took effect. ``Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock.'' Right under the article, ``Health Site Snafus Plague Maryland.'' I understand that is a State that has their own exchange. That is not even a Federally run exchange. When the President says the States are doing such a great job, and if we let the States do all of these things, we wouldn't have all of these problems. Maryland is having huge problems, as are quite a few of the States. Getting back to the letter written by this gentleman from Cody, WY, who was hit with an incredibly high deductible--higher than the average. The average is over $5,000, which is higher than it was last year for people around the country. He said: I'm not sure what planet they think I live on, but there is no way I can spend more than \1/2\ of my monthly income on insurance. For the first time in my adult life I will soon be without insurance. What does President Obama have to say about that? How does the ObamaCare health care law--I thought it was written in a way that people would get insurance, not lose insurance. Wasn't that the purpose of this? This gentleman said this is the first time in his life he will be without insurance. Why? Because of the law. He said: ``What does it matter if my 18-year-old children can stay on my insurance plan if I can't afford to keep one?'' I mean that is the big talking point on the other side of the aisle; young people up to age 26 can stay on their parents' health care plan. I think it is a good idea to allow young people to stay on their family's insurance plan. Of course the President tends to add in that it is free, and it is not free. There is a cost to that. I think it is a good idea to help with families. As this gentleman from Cody, WY, says: What does it matter if they can stay on the insurance plan if I can't afford to keep one? Also all the air time to pre existing conditions are meaningless if I can't afford to keep a plan. I feel greatly blessed to have the good paying job that I have. It puts me above the pay level that would allow me to get any subsidies. He has a family of four and can't get subsidies. He said: ``By the way, with the system in place this year, I wouldn't have needed subsidies.'' With the current system he wouldn't need subsidies, but when he goes from $860 to $2,400, he can't afford it even though he doesn't qualify for subsidies. Yes, we see the genius of the Obama health care law by ignoring what happens in real people's lives. I think it is interesting to see that the people who wrote this law wrote it behind closed doors. I know the President said this evening he was not a Member of this body at the time, but it was written behind closed doors through that door of the Senate. The people who knew the most about what is in that law, they seem to be the very people who have been excluded by the majority leader from having to live under it. Those are the people who got the exemption, and they are the ones who know what is in it. It is so ironic that the majority leader of the Senate would say that his people who helped to write this law don't have to live under it. The Washington Post calls him on it. Yet the rest of America has to live under what is not good enough for the majority leader's own staff. It is ironic and sad to see a day like this come to our country. As this gentleman says, he has never needed to have subsidies before. He said: ``I have never needed them in the past and would like to continue to never get a handout from my government.'' This is an independent individual. He doesn't want a subsidy. He is not asking for a subsidy. He just wants the insurance that worked for him and his family for all of these years, and now he has no insurance. He said: I employ about 35 people with my company. When we first opened about a year and \1/2\ ago we were talking about getting some sort of coverage. It became very clear that we will not be able to do this . . . They have 35 employees, so under the 50, but still wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to give people coverage. He said: It became clear that we will not be able to do this, and have stopped any of our plans to provide this in the future. We also know for sure that we cannot afford to ever employ more than 50 people as we continue to grow, there is an upward limit on how many people we will hire. That is as a result of the law and not because the business is not there and not because the economy won't support it. It is not because they don't want to employ more people, and not because they don't want to help their community. Because of the health care law, they are putting a cap on the size of their business. He said: Simple economics, Obamacare is a job killer in Wyoming. It has never been easy to be in business, that is part of the fun of being successful. It is discouraging when our federal government limits the American dream for everyone. The Federal Government is limiting the American dream for everyone. He said: ``I am thankful for your efforts, but from my office chair in Cody, it is already too late.'' I know I am not the only person in this body who is getting letters like this. I know people who actually voted for the health care law are getting letters like this. I am not sure what kind of responses they are giving them. We call these people. The staff has worked with them, and I visit with them when I get home on the weekends to listen to folks. But when we look at that sort of letter and that sort of well thought out rational approach from somebody who is working and has had insurance their whole life, that provides for his family and builds a business in a community, hires people, wants to provide insurance and now says: Not going to provide insurance, going to limit our growth, and my family loses insurance--why? It is because of a health care law that I think the President--I don't know if he had any idea of what the impact of this was going to be. We came to the floor on this side of the aisle day after day and week after week talking about why when you read the law, it is a real problem. We talked about why the concerns expressed by the American people should have been listened to but regrettably were not listened to, and why I think it is a terrible mistake and very harmful to the American people. It is not just the Web site. It is the higher premiums that my friend from Cody is hearing about because his coverage was canceled because it wasn't good enough according to the President. We will get to whether he could keep his doctor or not in a second. We have talked about higher copays and higher deductibles, and those are the things we are facing now in this country. People are noticing them around my State and all around the 50 States. Doctors are noticing it. I was in my medical office last week talking to some of my colleagues--my former medical partners. They are being swamped right now with folks coming in for care. This is not just in the middle of Wyoming. This is all across the country. I talked to a surgeon yesterday on the faculty at Duke University. He had the same story there. So we are seeing it east and west and north and south. Doctors' offices are being swamped with patients who have insurance now. The President's health care law was to make sure that more people got more insurance and coverage after the first of the year. These are people who have insurance now and are afraid they will not have it after the first of the year. They don't know if they will have it. If they had to go onto the exchanges, they haven't gotten confirmation from the exchanges yet. They are anxious about that; they are also angry. They don't know if they are going to be able to keep their doctor, which gets to the point of ``can't keep your doctor.'' So what they are doing is going to their doctors' offices now and saying: I have been putting this off for a while--my shoulder that has been bothering me or my hip or my knee, and I want to get it taken care of now while I know you are still my doctor. I know that I can still come to you at least until the end of the year, and I know for sure I still have insurance right now. Hospitals, medical offices, and clinics are all being swamped by patients trying to get caught up with things they may have put off for a while. They don't know what will happen come January 1st, and I will tell you neither does the President of the United States. I think the President doesn't know what will happen on January 1. I think he is standing there with his fingers crossed and hoping it doesn't get any worse. I will tell you. I think it will get worse with more people, with sticker shock of higher premiums, and coverage canceled. People are going to find out all across the country they can't keep their doctor. Fraud and identity theft is going to get worse as more cases get reported, and we are going to see more and more people not being able to pay their deductibles. I wanted to spend a second on this issue--on the whole issue of the President's promise that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. As a doctor, there is a very special relationship between a doctor and a patient and a patient and a doctor. It goes both ways. I think it was very telling, as well as distressing to many people, this past Sunday when on one of the Sunday news shows, Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel's brother, who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a physician in the academic setting--one of the interviewers asked him: Was it a true statement, ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?'' He said: The President never said you could go to all of these other people and specialists. The interviewer said: Wait a second. Let's get back to if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Ezekiel Emanuel basically said if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor if you are willing to pay more. That is not what the President said. The President used the punctuation point, used that period at the end of his sentence: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period. Now we have Ezekiel Emanuel on the Sunday shows saying: Well, the President never really said that. But he did. He said it dozens of times. Folks in this body have asked me about the bond between a doctor and a patient, and I think the President knew very well about that bond when he made the promise that if you like what you have, you can keep it. So I put pen to paper and had an editorial in yesterday's Investor's Business Daily--Wednesday, December 11, 2013--called ``A Special Bond Deeply Severed By ObamaCare.'' I would like to share some of those thoughts with my colleagues today because I think that is a special bond. As a doctor, I know what that bond is like with my patients. I write in this column: A central architect of the president's health care law admitted this week that the often repeated promise that ``if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor'' simply isn't true. Instead, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel explained that if you like your doctor, you will simply need to pay more to keep your doctor. I write: As a physician, I know firsthand how this will hurt many Americans. Families look to doctors as trusted friends, as confidants and as counselors and turn to them for advice in making life and death decisions. In Wyoming, patients have included me in graduations, in weddings, and asked me to serve as a pallbearer. They have asked me to pray with them, to referee family disputes, and to provide reassurance when a doctor they did not know was called in to consult. I go on: Norman Rockwell's painting ``Doctor and Doll'' tells the story. I think people here can kind of visualize that picture. A little girl holds up her doll as the trusted family doctor listens to the doll with his stethoscope. The caring, compassionate physician takes the time to reassure the concerned little girl. The doctor-patient relationship is a very special bond. It requires faith and trust for a patient to allow me to cut into their body to remove a tumor, to replace a warn-out joint, to fix a broken bone, to repair a torn ligament and, above all else, to do no harm. The President knew of the special relationship between people and their doctors. That is why when he was trying to gain support for his health care law, he made a clear and simple promise to the American people. The President said, ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period.'' Now people across the country are finding they can't keep their doctor. The same law that has caused millions of Americans to lose the health insurance that worked for them is now causing people to lose their doctors. People shopping for insurance on government exchanges and people going to the Web site are being forced to purchase insurance for things they don't want, don't need, or will never use. To keep costs down, many of these policies limit the doctors and limit the hospitals that patients can use. So not just the doctors, the hospitals as well, including the Mayo Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center--they are excluded from many insurance networks. Some of the best children's hospitals in the country are also excluded from the exchanges. This means a child with cancer-- And there have been articles about this-- may lose access to his or her doctor and the specialty hospital because of this law. Come January 1, there are kids in this country who are not going to have the ability under their new plans to go to the hospitals that have been treating these young people. In New Hampshire-- There are two Senators here from New Hampshire, one on either side of the aisle. In New Hampshire, 10 of the state's 26 hospitals-- So there are 26 hospitals; 10 of the State's 26 hospitals-- are excluded from the only carrier offering insurance in the exchange. There is only one carrier in the exchange. I remember the President talking about all of this competition. There is 1 carrier in the exchange. There are 26 hospitals in the State, and 10 of them are excluded from the only carrier that is offering insurance. I will tell my colleagues that this next sentence is fascinating. The head of the medical staff of one of the excluded hospitals-- This is the chief of staff of the hospital-- learned that her plan does not even allow her to seek treatment at her own hospital where she is the chief of staff. It is unbelievable. We take a look at that and say: How could this have happened? But that is the law that was passed, and that is the 7-foot tower of regulations that has come out from the bureaucracy. I write: The situation could be equally bad for seniors on Medicare. For seniors on Medicare, if you can't keep your doctor, it is a really big deal. It is sometimes difficult for a senior on Medicare to find a doctor. If they get one and then they like that doctor, they want to keep the doctor. As we have seen, seniors sometimes move to other communities to be closer to their kids and grandkids. To find a doctor is a struggle, it is a challenge, but I think the situation could be equally bad for Medicare, and here is why, and I wrote about it in this editorial in the Investor's Business Daily yesterday: Thousands of doctors caring for seniors on Medicare Advantage-- And about one in four people is on this program called Medicare Advantage. Thousands of doctors caring for seniors on Medicare Advantage have been dropped from their networks. Those Medicare patients will now be challenged with finding a new doctor to take care of them. The president's health care law is making it harder for doctors as well as patients. It is not just the patients; it is very hard for doctors. Doctors know their patients' health history, they know their families, they know their lives. Doctors value the personal relationship as much as the patient does. That's why people become doctors in the first place--to take care of their patients. In my graduating class, the way we felt about it--and I was invited back to speak at the commencement. I think it was about the 30th year after I had graduated that I got invited back as a guest speaker, talking to those medical students who were graduating. That is the same reason people continue to go into medicine. They want to take care of patients. They are intellectually stimulated and challenged by all the new advances, but people go into medicine to take care of their patients. In this editorial, I say: Even if someone is able to keep their doctor, they won't necessarily be able to spend as much time with that doctor as they might like. That's because nearly two-thirds of the doctors expect to spend more time on paperwork under the requirements of the new law. So doctors are going to have to spend more time on paperwork. Some of this is done with computers, with electronic medical records, but there are still paperwork-keeping activities. It is interesting because so often doctors have the computer in the office with the patient, and patients feel the computer that is mandated under the health care law is interfering, with the doctor looking at the computer screen rather than looking at the patient. So this is all having a significant impact. I conclude by saying: This is not at all what the president promised. People all across America put their faith and trust in Barack Obama when they elected him President. It's the same kind of faith and trust they have in their doctor. When patients lose trust in their doctor--or citizens lose trust in their president--it is extremely difficult to regain. That is why--going back to yesterday's Wall Street Journal: ``Health Care Law Hurts President Politically''--the disapproval rate has risen to an alltime high of 54 percent. Fifty-four percent disapprove of the President. I go on to say in this article, which is what happens: I continue to hear from my patients in Wyoming. They have always had my home phone number. They are anxious. They are angry. They call me at home. They know what they wanted from health care reform. What they wanted was access to quality, affordable care. That is what the President talked about in his speeches, but that is not what he delivered in his health care law. That's not what they got with this law. Now, many face losing the doctor who has always been there for them. If President Obama wants to regain the trust of the American people, he will sit down with Republicans to deliver reforms that will help all Americans and fully protect the doctor-patient relationship. After all-- And I hear this at home in Wyoming-- President Obama has his own doctor at the White House who is dedicated to his care. I'm sure he values that relationship just as much as other Americans value their relationship with their doctor. So that is what I felt when I wrote this article called ``A Special Bond Deeply Severed By ObamaCare'' in yesterday's--December 11--issue of Investor's Business Daily, that people can't keep their doctor and there are great concerns about that, and they are being impacted in so many ways. It is interesting. Since this health care law passed, I have come to the floor just about every week with a doctor's second opinion about the health care law to talk about ways that I felt this health care law was bad for patients, bad for doctors and nurses, physician assistants, and others who take care of patients, and why I thought it was terrible for the taxpayers. But it seems that in recent weeks we can pick up any newspaper and there is a story basically saying this law is bad for people. This is the New York Times, and they support the law. This past Monday, Robert Parry, a well-known journalist who writes frequently on the topic of the health care law and on health exchanges, said: Premiums may be low, but other costs can be high. For months, the Obama administration has heralded the low premiums and medical insurance policies on sale in the insurance exchanges created by the health care law, but as consumers dig into the details-- Which is something I was asking for on this Senate floor a number of years ago when the law passed: Will the Democrats please dig into the details to see what impact this is going to have on people in terms of higher premiums, in terms of canceled coverage, in terms of trying to keep their doctor, in terms of higher copays and deductibles, in terms of people on Medicare trying to find a doctor to take care of them. As consumers dig into the details, they are finding that the deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs are often much higher-- Often much higher; not a rare case-- than what is typical in employer-sponsored health plans, which says that the exchanges are not going to be helping many people. I found it interesting--talking a little about people not being able to keep their doctors but also not being able to keep their hospitals-- why is that? I think we are seeing a number of these exchanges and policies being offered. They realize that the people who go to certain hospitals have more serious conditions, likely more expensive, and as a result don't include those hospitals. In the Financial Times this week, ``Healthcare insurers cut costs by excluding top hospitals.'' This was Monday of this week, and we are seeing this week after week, which is why I have been coming to the floor with great regularity to share with this body what people across the country are seeing. It says: People buying insurance plans under ``ObamaCare'' will have limited access to some of the leading U.S. hospitals, including two renowned cancer centers, as insurers try to cut costs. There is a picture of MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. It says the plan will not cover treatment at the Houston cancer center. I didn't even get into that in my article. I talked about pediatric hospitals, and I talked about New Hampshire hospitals. But we are talking about major cancer hospitals that are not included in the exchanges for the most part, and that is what we are seeing all across the country. You can kind of compare it to what kind of car you could buy. What kind of coverage can you get. But the bottom line is people were misled by the President and people feel deceived by this President. Tuesday's Washington Post: ``Under health law, insurers limiting drug coverage.'' ``Costs may soar for those with HIV, other ailments.'' This is not on the back page. This is on the front page of the Washington Post. This is all as a result of what the Democrats, in a party-line vote, passed and forced upon the country. That is what is going on here. We have a health care law that people are very uncomfortable with, and they are going to continue to let the President know that, which is why he is being hurt, his disapproval is the highest ever, and what has been sharply eroded are folks' belief in this President's honesty and his leadership ability to handle a crisis. This is a crisis for the President. This is a crisis for the country. What is the President doing about it? He is blaming the Republicans for a law that passed with no Republican votes. He is blaming the Republicans for an idea that was his and was forced through on party- line votes, without Republican input, written behind closed doors, right through those doors over there, by people who have now been excluded, do not have to go under the health care law. Yet in the Washington Post: ``Harry Reid's explanation for why not all of his staff is going on ``ObamaCare' ''--and the big three Pinocchios. Remember the story of Pinocchio, the boy whose nose grew whenever he told falsehoods. That is what the Washington Post has to say about the majority leader of the Senate in not making all of his employees live under what the rest of the country is having to deal with right now. I think it is very distressing. That is what we are facing. The country is facing higher premiums. Are people going to not have Christmas because they are, instead, having to use that money to pay their January premium? Are they going to not pay the January premium? How does that play into all this? Are they going to decide: I don't think I am going to have insurance, like my friend from Cody who wrote to me, who has had insurance all of his life but not now. We have a Senator from Wyoming, the other Senator, the senior Senator, Mike Enzi. He was one who was also sounding the alarm during this entire debate. He saw the impacts beforehand. It was interesting. There was a letter to the editor in the Powell Tribune, a newspaper in Wyoming, that talked about what we saw coming with this health care law. It was written by someone from Gillette, a Marion Scott. The headline is: ``Enzi saw ACA impacts beforehand. . . . '' It says: Dear Editor: Fox News had a very interesting and informative program Tuesday evening Nov. 6 on ``The Kelly Files with Megyn Kelly.'' As anyone who watches Fox News knows, they are covering the beginning effects of the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, as it is being implemented. Megyn Kelly began her program stating she had a special guest who had predicted three-and-one-half years ago almost exactly what will happen when the Obamacare law goes into effect this October. Her special guest was our own Wyoming senior Senator Mike Enzi and he had made his predictions in a speech on the Senate floor three-and-one-half years ago. He was then called a fearmonger and radical rightwinger. And he was. That is what they called him, as Senator Enzi went to the floor because of his concerns that you would not be able to keep your insurance. He had actually read the Federal Register, saw the regulations that came out, and he said: Millions of people are going to lose their insurance. He said it from right here at this desk over here. He came to the Senate floor. He said it 3\1/2\ years ago, and those on the other side of the aisle voted against Senator Enzi's proposal that would actually let people keep their insurance. It was the regulations regarding grandfathered insurance policies, that people would be able to keep their policies. That was the vote. Those on this side of the aisle all voted to allow people to keep their policies because that is what the President promised them. Folks on the other side of the aisle voted against Senator Enzi's proposal. But those on the other side called Senator Enzi ``a fearmonger and radical rightwinger.'' It says: Senator Enzi was probably one of a very few elected officials who had actually read the bill. Senator Enzi, it says, was one of the few elected officials who actually read the bill. I believe that. Who can forget Nancy Pelosi saying: First you have to pass it before you get to find out what is in it. That video has been played and played again and again. I believe that many of the people who voted for it never did read it. I believe they did not read the bill. I believe they did not really understand it, and part of it is, I believe, they actually believed the President when he said: If you like what you have, you can keep it. If you like your insurance, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. So they took this as an article of faith. I read the bill. Senator Enzi read the bill. I know a number of our Members who read it were very concerned and came to the floor and spoke about different parts of the bill. I can remember Senator Susan Collins standing here with her sign about the impact on small businesses and how detrimental it was going to be. I remember Senator Olympia Snowe down here on the floor focusing on how it was going to impact businesses in Maine. Yet all of these concerns that we raised, which are now coming home to roost today, were ignored on the other side of the aisle. This woman continues and concludes by saying: With this kind of representation in the Senate I would ask Wyoming voters this question. Is now a good time to send a new Senator to Washington and lose this experience and seniority? I will tell you, I am proud to stand with Senator Enzi, and he saw it coming. He saw it coming 3\1/2\ years ago with the amendment on the Senate floor. We voted that way, and the Democrats voted essentially to confirm that people would lose their insurance. They were not going to be able to keep it even if they liked it. So these are the problems that continue to plague the health care law, continue to plague folks all around the country, as they are trying to deal with something they never anticipated. You kind of think a year in advance: What is going to happen with our kids? What is going to happen? Are we going to need to do something with the car? Patch a hole in the roof? How do we kind of budget for the year? I will tell you, my friend in Cody, WY, never ever saw it coming that he was going to have to go from $860 a month to $2,400 a month for health insurance. We know that at least 5 million people have gotten letters that they have lost their insurance. For them, I do not think they are going to find it is going to be a very happy holiday season, a very Merry Christmas. I think they are going to be trying to figure out: Do I have insurance or do I go without it, as what is going to happen with my friend there. Those are the things we are looking at. Then, of course, there is the Web site. It is just interesting. This is an article in this week's Jackson Hole News & Guide in Jackson Hole, WY. ``New health care glitches plaguing Jacksonites. Marketplace insurance companies try to mail paperwork to Jackson street addresses.'' But they only get mail in post office boxes there. But that is how the Web site was set up. It was not set up so there would be a separate area if you do not have a street address. They need a physical address, but in some places you do not get mail that way, in many places around the country, in certain rural American locations. But the people who wrote it, the people who did this whole thing were rather clueless about how the country works, rather clueless about what happens in people's homes, in people's families, in people's communities. I am sure they are very smart people and got degrees from advanced places but really do not have an idea of what is going on out there. I also found it interesting that even when the President tried to tell success stories of people who may have had some success under this, it does not even pan out. A story on CNN: ``Woman Hailed by President as Obamacare Success Story Now Can't Afford Obamacare.'' CNN reports that a woman the President hailed as an ObamaCare success story just realized she won't be able to afford ObamaCare because it is too expensive. It is too expensive. This is the tragedy. This is a national tragedy, this Obama health care law. It was a self-inflicted wound on our country. No foreign enemy did this to us. The President of the United States, who gave speeches that painted a broad picture of a better world, has delivered a much worse world for folks through this legislation. I think this is devastating to the country, to patients, to doctors, to the nurses, the caregivers, and to the taxpayers. The reason we needed health care reform in the country was because of the cost of care. That is what this was all about, trying to help people get the care they need from a doctor they choose at lower cost. That is what we were really focused on. So we needed reform. We needed the right kind of reform--reform that actually lowers patients' costs, improves health, and protects the vulnerable. So that means more affordable insurance options. It means helping people with preexisting conditions. It means protecting quality care for older Americans. We do not have any of that with this President's health care law. This is causing costs to go up, causing quality to go down, causing people to lose their doctor. The President, time and time again, in speech after speech, talked about providing coverage, but not providing care. As a doctor will tell you, there is a huge difference between coverage and care. This whole thing was predicated on printing up and giving out to people Medicaid cards. Medicaid is a broken system. States will tell you, Governors will tell you, that in many States Medicaid is the No. 1 cost driver of the State. In our home State, it was No. 1 when I was in the State senate. What it meant is that money that went to that then was not able to be used for teachers or schools or students or roads or public safety officers. It is a huge cost driver. So the issue is we needed to deal with the cost of care. The President says: Put them all in this Medicaid system. What is it? Forty percent--some high number of physicians do not want to take patients on Medicaid because in a sense the reimbursement to doctors who take care of those patients is low enough that you could not even afford to keep the doors of the clinic open if all you saw were Medicaid patients all day. So doctors want to see and take care of everyone. The idea was to put all these additional people on Medicaid, give them Medicaid cards. But this whole health care law did nothing adequately to address the need for more health care providers. So now you have more people with so- called coverage, but it is empty coverage, it is not quality care because there are not enough people to actually take care of the patients who are now being covered. It is like giving people a bus ticket when there is no bus coming. They can just stand there, but it does not mean they can actually get care. But the President continued to focus on coverage, and coverage does not equal care. So you take a look at the problems families face with cost and access, and what the President is trying to provide is coverage, but we have seen higher premiums, coverage canceled, which is coverage that worked for many people. Some of these are now being forced into trying to find something. People are losing their doctor and have higher out- of-pocket costs, higher copays, higher deductibles. You read some of these stories of somebody saying: If I have to pay all this every month, why should I even sign up? Why don't I just pay the fine? Why should I pay all this every month and then have such a high deductible when I am never going to use that much care. Maybe they never will use that much. So the logic behind this whole thing is baffling to many who have kind of ignored it, I think until now, until October 1 when the Web site went live and subsequently crashed repeatedly. But now they are saying: Hey, I have lost my insurance. That has been the real fracture point, when people see they have lost their insurance that has worked for them. To replace it is going to be something that does not work as well for them and their families and is going to be more expensive. So we see the public reaction to the law. It is a reaction related to the premiums, related to trying to use the exchanges, and related to whether employers stop hiring, which we have seen from my friend in Cody, WY. We have seen the issues of reduced work hours because there is the regulation, if you are working more than 30 hours a week you get counted toward that 50 employees. So many businesses have lowered the work hours for people, which affects their take-home pay. The President had some thoughts on that. He said we will just delay the employer mandate for 1 year. That is the mandate in the law that everyone has to--at work they have to supply insurance to the employees. The President may have had some idea that things were going to get sticky for him and he was going to become a little more unpopular with the individual mandate. So he pushed off the employer mandate for 1 year, unilaterally. When is the law the law and when is the law something that the President can take a page out, throw it away and say: Well, we will move that back a year. It has happened about 14 times in this law. Even when the House tried to give the President authority to do what he did, the Democrats blocked that. It is astonishing. What about the individual mandate? We are going to be fining people--the government. The President is going to be fining people; whether it is a fine, a tax, a penalty, depending on how the Supreme Court states. That is going to go into effect January 1. The people may not even be able to buy the product they are being fined for not having come January 1. So is the President going to delay the individual mandate as well? There was a vote in the House, a number of people voted with bipartisan support for that. I think it is going to be challenging in the days ahead for the President to get ahead of the situation the country is facing. The newest numbers were out yesterday with the signup. The Associated Press reported on that: Health care signups pick up the pace in November playing catchup with a long way to go. President Obama's new health insurance market last month picked up the dismal pace of signups, the administration reported Wednesday. Employment statistics showed 364,000 people had signed up as of November 30 under the health care law. Although that is more than three times the October total, it is less than one-third of the 1.2 million people officials had originally projected would enroll nationwide by the end of November. So crunch time is coming. Consumers who are afraid they do not have insurance, they have until December 23, if they want to keep their coverage January 1. But as I said earlier, that is why we are seeing so many people across the country who do have insurance going to doctors now--the doctor they know, the doctor they like--to take care of problems that may have been kind of put on the back burner but that they would like to have taken care of now because they are not sure what is going to happen January 1: not sure if they are going to be able to go to the same doctor, not sure if they are going to be able to go to the same hospital, not sure if they are going to be able to have insurance, even though they think they may have insurance. Those are the things the American people are facing. So as we come to the floor to discuss this nominee, the number of questions I have are those related to what she would think about employers changing things, people not signing up, others being forced to sign up; should she have to live under the law of the land as a government employee, when the Senate majority leader says, well, his people--some of his people do, some do not. These are questions one would expect to have answered. I know we are going to vote on that nominee in a couple of hours. But I think this is something the nominee should be thinking about as we take a look at this health care law and the devastating impacts it is having on people all across the country. Take a look at what is happening for consumers, people who do not work in Washington, people who do not live in Washington. What you see is that the costs are going to be crippling to them. I stand here amazed that that gentleman from Cody, WY, tripled the cost. I do not know that everybody is going to face that. But the President promised that costs would go down. He promised his health care reform would save American families I think he said $2,500 per year by the end of his first term. I remember--and I have seen the reel of him saying it--fifteen times he said that. Your insurance premiums will go down by $2,500 by the end of the first term. Go down? They have gone up significantly, thousands of dollars. They have gone up. This is as he was a candidate running for President. He promised his health care reform would save American families $2,500 by the end of his first term. But for many Americans it is driving the premiums way up; in some cases doubling them, in some cases tripling them. It is happening on the exchanges. It is happening for people who are trying to shop not on the exchanges but if they have lost their policy and have to start paying for a lot of other things, whether it is pediatric dental care, pediatric ophthalmology care. All of those things drive up the costs. That is the sticker shock of the health care law. So as people continue to learn more about the law, they are going to continue to become more and more displeased, which is why I think we are going to go back to this headline: ``Health care law hurts President politically.'' I know for people in this body that is a big deal. For the President that is a big deal, because the last time I had a chance to speak face to face with the President, he was taking a lot about polls. But as a doctor, I am more concerned about how the health care law is hurting people's health, hurting their families, hurting their families economically, hurting the help they need, the care they need, interfering with life choices, impacting their quality of life, costing them in terms of disposable income in terms of money they could use for other things, and it is all because of the health care law. I am going to continue to come back to the floor on a regular basis to talk, not about the Web site failures because that is just the tip of the iceberg. I expect that the Web site is going to get fixed. It is going to take them a while. It is going to take them a lot longer than they ever suspected, because the day it happened, they described the Web site problem as being a result of heavy traffic. We know on that same day, worldwide, many Web sites had much more traffic. The site broke down with I think less than 1,000 people logging on. But they said it would be fixed almost immediately. It was not. Here we are. They said it would be fixed by the end of November. So they gave themselves 2 months. It was not. Somebody testified not too long ago in the House to say the back end has not been built, there is 30 to 40 percent of it which has not even been put together. Ultimately the Web site will get fixed, but the higher premiums are going to continue, people trying to buy insurance for their family that meets the criteria the President has set out which is not based on criteria that works for families or necessary for families. It is just these 10 things government has decided that they think they know what is best for families, when I think families know what is best for them and what they would look for with health insurance and health care. So we are going to continue to face higher premiums. People are going to continue to have their coverage canceled. It is not just the individuals. Next year when the employer mandate goes into effect, when businesses are forced to make a decision: Do I try to buy health insurance that meets all of those high demands that government says has to be included? Do I meet all of that and face these double or triple higher premiums or do I say just go to the exchanges? People who work, will they lose their employer-based insurance? I think we are going to see more and more of that. Even the Congressional Budget Office, which took a look at this health care law, said it will happen. They said there are employers who will no longer provide insurance who are providing it now. There are different numbers from different assessments as to how many people are going to be forced off their employer-based insurance, how many folks will lose it. I do not know. I have seen different ranges. But it starts in the low millions and it goes into the tens and twenties and thirties of millions and even higher than that. So those are the folks who will be losing and having their coverage canceled. Then will those people be able to keep their doctor? The answer there is many will not. Many will not. Many of those who have lost their insurance now are not going to be able too keep their doctor, even if they want to, and even if their doctor wants to keep them. Doctors do not even know if they are going to be included in a number of these exchanges. They cannot find out, when they go and look and try to see if they can get on the Web site, where are they covered, where are they not included? This has been so poorly thought out and so poorly executed. It has left patients in the lurch, it has left hospitals in the lurch, and it has left doctors in the lurch. I am astonished that all of those people still have the faith and confidence in the President, which is probably another reason why people do not look to the President now as having either honesty or leadership ability to handle a crisis--to see such a precipitous drop in the view of the President's ability to handle a crisis. Because if they cannot get this right, what happens in terms of a national disaster? How could he respond quickly when he had 3\1/2\ years to put together a Web site that apparently he paid very little attention to? So we are looking at the higher premiums, the canceled coverage, cannot keep your doctor, the higher copays and deductibles are going to continue to plague this country and people. I know people on both sides of the aisle are going to get letters to this effect. I know the Presiding Officer, when he goes home every night to his home State, hears from people. You stop and fill up with gas, you hear from people. I am hoping other colleagues of ours will actually read their mail, go home, listen to people, to see how devastating of an impact this health care law is having on their lives, their individual lives. Will there be some people who benefit from this health care law? Oh, yes. But the pain it is causing for millions and millions of Americans is not at all what the President promised them: You like what you have, you can keep it with your insurance. Not true; insurance premiums drop $2,500. Not true; If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Not true. So I come to the floor to discuss a nominee who very likely is not going to ever have to be living under the President's health care law, is going to go under some other health program, paid for with taxpayer dollars that those taxpayers are not going to have in their own pockets to pay for their own premiums, while she enjoys a government insurance program paid for in a different way by their taxpayer dollars, where she is likely to be able to keep her doctor, not be subjected to the higher premiums, not be subjected to canceled coverage, not be subjected to losing her doctor, not be subjected to the fraud and identity theft, and not be subjected to the higher copays and deductibles. I would say, if it is good enough for the people of America--that is what President Obama wanted for them--if it is good enough for Members of this body, except for those the majority leader said, oh, no, they know what is in it so they do not need to live under it, I think it ought to be good enough for this nominee as well. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I just found out PolitiFact, which is a group who takes a look at what politicians say each year, just came out with what they are describing as the ``Lie of the Year.'' PolitiFact, ``Lie of the Year.'' It is none other than that of President Barack Obama, ``If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,'' called by PolitiFact the ``Lie of the Year.'' It is not surprising that those of us from around the country are getting letters, emails, and calls from folks at home who are finding out they cannot keep it. They listened to the President, they believed the President, who has now had his statement listed as being the ``Lie of the Year.'' I have a letter from Cody, WY, from a man who said: Just got a quote from my insurance agent on a Obama care insurance. From $860 that I currently spend per month for my family of 4, to $2,400 per month. He said: All with the low deductible of $10,000 per person per year. I'm not sure what planet they think I live on, but there is no way I can spend more than \1/2\ of my monthly income on insurance. For the first time in my adult life I will soon be without insurance. What does it matter if my two 18-year-old children can stay on an insurance plan if I can't afford to keep one? Also, all the airtime to preexisting conditions is meaningless if I can't afford to keep a plan. I feel greatly blessed to have the good paying job that I have. It puts me above the pay level that would allow me to get any subsidies. By the way, with the system in place this year I wouldn't have needed subsidies. Because he was paying something he could afford. I have never needed them in the past and would like to continue to never get a hand out from my government. This is what I expect to hear from the people of Wyoming--not looking for a handout from the government and able to take care of themselves. They are rugged individuals. What this constituent has gotten from a Presidential promise turns out to be the lie of the year. He sees an increase in his health insurance from $860 a month to over $2,000 a month. He said: I employ 35 people with my company. When we first opened about a year and \1/2\ ago we were talking about getting some sort of coverage. It became very clear that we will not be able to do this, and have stopped any of our plans to provide this in the future. We also know for sure that we can not afford to ever employ more than 50 people, so as we continue to grow, there is an upward limit on how many people we will hire. Here is an individual who has a business and has hired 35 people. He is not going to provide insurance because the costs are too high. He says that he is never going to have more than 50 employees. The opportunities may be there--wanting to put people back to work--but, no, there is a cap at 50. Why? Because of the health care law that has been forced down the throats of the American people. It was voted along party lines by Democrats in the House and in the Senate. So here we are, hurting the economy and hurting people's health. He goes on: Simple economics, Obamacare is a job killer in Wyoming. ObamaCare is a job killer not just in Wyoming but all across the country. He said: It has never been easy to be in business, that is part of the fun of being successful. It is discouraging when our federal government limits the American dream for everyone. I am thankful for your efforts, but from my chair in Cody, it is already too late. A failed Web site is just the tip of the iceberg. Web sites can be fixed, but what can't be fixed is the destruction this health care law is doing to the health of America in terms of canceled policies. We now have over 5 million policies that have been canceled across the country. Five million people have letters saying: We are sorry, but your policy is canceled. Why? Maybe they didn't have the type of insurance the President deemed good enough for them. I received a letter from a lady who lives in Newcastle, WY. She is a rancher. I talked to her at our Farm Bureau meeting in Wyoming. She said: I lost my insurance because the President didn't deem my policy good enough because it didn't include maternity coverage. She knows me and knows I am a doctor. She said: Doc, I had a hysterectomy; I don't need maternity coverage. She knows whether she needs maternity coverage. The President of the United States doesn't have a clue. Yet he is the one who determines what kind of coverage she needs because it is the President who decided that he will be the one who will decide what the American people need, not them. She knew what worked for her and her family and what they could afford as far as a deductible. There are people across my State who have absolute levels of anger and anxiety, and it is reflected in the letters I continue to get. The front page of yesterday's Wall Street Journal talked about the amount of deductibles. The deductibles in the bronze policy are the cheapest and average over $5,000 per person. A husband and wife will have a $10,000 deductible before they even get to the insurance. Yet they have to buy expensive insurance with these huge deductibles in order to comply with the individual mandate the Democrats have forced on the American people, that you have to buy it whether you call it a fee, a fine, or a charge. Call it what you will--a tax. So we have the fact that the costs are too high and, of course, the deductibles. I am going to continue to come back. I will be back later this evening with more letters, but I appreciate your attention.

Mr. BARRASSO

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to the following members of my staff, Ryan Lojo and Abbie Golden, during the pendency of today's session of the Senate, December 12, 2013.