{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.crapo.senate.gov/media/newsreleases/crapo-obamacare-has-undermined-health-care-in-america", "Crapo: Obamacare Has Undermined Health Care in America", "2025-12-09", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "ID", "Mike Crapo", "C000880", "www.crapo.senate.gov", "crapo", "https://www.crapo.senate.gov/media/newsreleases", "scraper", "Washington, D.C.\u2014Today on the Senate Floor, U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) called on his colleagues to support the Health Care Freedom for Patients Act, legislation to lower health care costs and give money directly to families to control their own care. He also discussed Obamacare\u2019s failures, including the rampant fraud caused by the enhanced Obamacare health care subsidies, and explained why a straight extension of this program will do nothing to lower costs or premiums, or protect taxpayers.\n\nOn the failure of Obamacare:\n\n\u201cThere were signs from the start that Obamacare would not work, which is why not one single Republican voted for it. That is also why the Democrats created the premium tax credits in the first place: they did not trust the one-size-fits-all nature of Obamacare to lower costs or to expand options. Instead of decreasing, over the last 15 years, Obamacare premiums have increased over 220 percent. A family of four pays $10,000 more for coverage today than they did before Obamacare, and their deductibles have doubled. Insurance providers have dried up and rural hospitals are struggling.\n\n\u201cObamacare is broken and throwing good taxpayer money after bad policy is not going to fix it.\n\n\u201cThe enhanced premium tax credits account for only about four percentage points of next year\u2019s projected 20 percent increase in insurance premiums. Extending them will not solve this crisis. What it will do is cause tens of billions in more dollars to be paid directly to insurance companies without improving patient care or choice.\u201d\n\nOn fraud in the Biden COVID Bonuses:\n\n\u201cWith taxpayers footing the bill, these subsidies give insurance companies every single reason they need to keep hiking premiums. Even the Washington Post just yesterday explained that \u2018Obamacare subsidies make it too easy to scam the system.\u2019\n\n\u201cLast year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that 1.6 million Americans were enrolled in both Medicaid and Obamacare plans. This year, 6.4 million Americans were improperly enrolled in enhanced premium tax credits at a cost of $27 billion.\n\n\u201cAnother 12 million subsidized plans reported no claims in 2024, suggesting that many of them were opened on behalf of people who did not even know they were insured. Because insurance companies receive the subsidies regardless of whether a plan is used, there is no incentive on their part to check the enrollment status. In 2024, 35 billion dollars were paid out for these unused plans.\u201d\n\nOn the Health Care Freedom for Patients Act:\n\n\u201cSenator Cassidy and I have a different plan. The motivating principle is simple: patients should decide where their health care spending goes, not insurance companies.\n\n\u201cIn line with President Trump\u2019s call to direct money to patients instead of insurance companies, this approach builds on the success of the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, which expanded Health Savings Account (HSA) eligibility to be paired with more affordable insurance plans.\n\n\u201cThese pre-funded, patient-driven accounts will help Americans pay for the out-of-pocket costs that are making health care unaffordable.\n\n\u201cOur plan would take some of the money that otherwise would be spent on the COVID bonuses and direct it into HSAs attached to Obamacare bronze or catastrophic plans as monthly deposits totaling 1,000 to 1,500 dollars a year. Families can use that money to cover costs not handled by their insurance policy, without waiting for insurance companies to approve their treatment decisions.\n\n\u201cFamilies can use that money to cover costs not handled by their insurance policy, without waiting for insurance companies to approve their treatment decisions. Our plan would also fund cost-sharing reduction subsidies, which mitigate out-of-pocket costs for low-income enrollees, reducing premiums by over 10 percent and saving taxpayers\u2019 money.\n\n\u201cIt is time to lay the groundwork for giving Americans more control over their health care choices and truly making quality health care more affordable.\u201d\n\n______________________\n\nFull remarks as prepared for delivery:\n\nThis week, we are going to spend a lot of time discussing the problems with our health care system. To do that, we need to understand how we got here.\n\nConcerns about rising health care costs are not new. In 2009, Democrats highlighted shortcomings in the American health care system as proof that the federal government had to intervene.\n\nPresident Obama told us how to judge his health care plan. He told us that Americans would be able to keep their insurance plans and their doctors.\n\nHe also told us that insurance premiums would go down. As everyone knows, these predictions did not come true.\n\nBut there were signs from the start that Obamacare would not work, which is why not a single Republican voted for it.\n\nThat is also why Democrats created the premium tax credits in the first place: they did not trust the one-size-fits-all nature of Obamacare to lower costs and expand options.\n\nInstead of decreasing, over the last 15 years, Obamacare premiums have increased over 220 percent.\n\nA family of four pays $10,000 more for coverage today than they did before Obamacare, and their deductibles have doubled.\n\nInsurance providers have dried up and rural hospitals are struggling.\n\nObamacare has undermined health care in America.\n\nIn 2021, Democrats again decided that premiums were too high and that a federal response was necessary.\n\nBut rather than fix the structural flaws in Obamacare, they created an even bigger subsidy with fewer guardrails to entice more people into a broken program.\n\nNot only did they make the subsidy bigger, they made everyone eligible regardless of their income, so families making $600,000 a year began to qualify.\n\nDemocrats also temporarily eliminated reviews to confirm accurate payments and allowed individuals to continuously enroll throughout the year.\n\nBecause those changes were made under the premise of responding to the pandemic, the enhancements were only supposed to last for two years.\n\nBut before they expired, Democrats extended them for three years, again without a single Republican vote.\n\nWith those expanded subsidies again about to expire\u2014again, at a date set by my Democrat colleagues\u2014the pattern has become clear:\n\nDemocrats respond to rising premiums by throwing taxpayer money at the problem.\n\nTheir supposedly \u201cshort-term\u201d fixes only drive premiums higher and make the problem harder to solve, leaving us with apparently no choice other than to do the same thing again and again.\n\nObamacare is broken and throwing good taxpayer money after bad policy is not going to fix it.\n\nThe enhanced premium tax credits account for only about four percentage points of next year\u2019s projected 20 percent increase in insurance premiums.\n\nExtending them will not solve this crisis.\n\nWhat it will do is cause tens of billions in more dollars to be paid directly to insurance companies without improving patient care or choice.\n\nWith taxpayers footing the bill, these subsidies give insurance companies every reason to keep hiking premiums.\n\nEven the Washington Post just yesterday explained that \u201cObamacare subsidies make it too easy to scam the system.\u201d\n\nLast year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that 1.6 million Americans were enrolled in both Medicaid and Obamacare plans.\n\nThis year, 6.4 million Americans were improperly enrolled in enhanced premium tax credits at a cost of $27 billion.\n\nAnother 12 million subsidized plans reported no claims in 2024, suggesting that many of them were opened on behalf of people who did not even know that they were insured.\n\nBecause insurance companies receive the subsidy regardless of whether a plan is used, there\u2019s no incentive to check the enrollment status.\n\nIn 2024, 35 billion dollars were paid out for these unused plans.\n\nMy colleagues in the House asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the fraud surrounding the Obamacare tax credits.\n\nTheir findings were shocking.\n\nThe GAO created fake identities and attempted to enroll them in subsidized Obamacare plans.\n\nAll four of their fake applicants in 2024 received subsidies.\n\nThis year, 18 of 20 applicants did.\n\nThe GAO also found tens of thousands of cases of apparent identity theft, and hundreds of thousands of cases where insurers or brokers changed people\u2019s plans or enrolled them in new ones without their consent.\n\nPerhaps worst of all, they found that over $21 billion worth of subsidies\u2014nearly a third of all subsidies paid out in 2023\u2014had not been double-checked against enrollees\u2019 income.\n\nThat means that there was nothing stopping those enrollees from misrepresenting their incomes to receive higher subsidies than those for which they were eligible.\n\nUltimately, it is not just taxpayers that are hurt by this fraud, although taxpayers should not be on the hook for it to begin with.\n\nThe other Americans who rely on federal health programs suffer as these programs go to waste.\n\nRepublicans addressed some of these program integrity issues in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act when we tightened eligibility and verification standards for federal health care programs.\n\nBut no degree of oversight and enforcement is as effective as addressing the basic incentives that result in fraud.\n\nI appreciate that some of my Democratic colleagues have finally acknowledged these issues, but the fact remains that they have not offered any ideas on how to solve them.\n\nExtending these expensive, fraud-ridden subsidies for another three years with no real reforms\u2014not one!\u2014is a non-starter.\n\nContinuing to pour billions of dollars more into the pockets of big insurance companies and fraudsters will not lower health care costs for American families\u2014especially when you consider that the vast majority of Americans are not insured through the Obamacare marketplace and are therefore not eligible for these subsidies in the first place.\n\nSenator Cassidy and I have a different plan. The motivating principle is simple: patients should decide where their health care spending goes, not insurance companies.\n\nIn line with President Trump\u2019s call to direct money to patients instead of insurance companies, this approach builds on the success of the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, which expanded Health Savings Account (HSA) eligibility to be paired with more affordable insurance plans.\n\nThese pre-funded, patient-driven accounts will help Americans pay for the out-of-pocket costs that are making health care unaffordable.\n\nOur plan would take some of the money that otherwise would be spent on the COVID bonuses and direct it into HSAs attached to Obamacare bronze or catastrophic plans as monthly deposits totaling 1,000 to 1,500 dollars a year.\n\nFamilies can use that money to cover costs not handled by their insurance policy, without waiting for insurance companies to approve their treatment decisions.\n\nBecause families want the best value for their money, they will seek out the most appropriate treatment. Over time, this should result in lower health care costs as care providers compete for patients.\n\nOur plan would also fund cost-sharing reduction subsidies, which mitigate out-of-pocket costs for low-income enrollees, reducing premiums by over 10 percent and saving taxpayers\u2019 money.\n\nThese cost-sharing reductions would finally challenge the notion that Americans should simply accept ever-escalating premiums as the norm.\n\nIn contrast, Democrats\u2019 temporary COVID bonuses do not lower costs or premiums.\n\nThey throw billions of dollars at insurance companies, up to 20 percent of which can go to profit and overhead.\n\nOur plan avoids that issue and empowers patients to control their own health care.\n\nWe cannot transform our broken health care system overnight, but we can make real progress.\n\nWe still have a chance to enact reforms that will do more than paper over the cracks in our health care system. We should take that opportunity instead of making the enhanced premium tax credit mistake all over again.\n\nIt is time to lay the groundwork for giving Americans more control over their health care choices and truly making quality health care more affordable.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.crapo.senate.gov/media/newsreleases/crapo-obamacare-has-undermined-health-care-in-america"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7915408350527287, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}