{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.roberts.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=7F07B400-75EF-4BFD-8DDC-B8B4E3C389D4", "Senator Roberts: Obamacare is Failing", "2016-09-08", "2016", "2016-09", "Republican", "House", "KS", "Pat Roberts", "R000307", "www.roberts.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON, DC \u2013 U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) today delivered a floor speech on the failures of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and its harmful effects on Kansas families.\r\n\u201cToday, we see less choice, less competition, insurers coming and going and rising premiums,\u201d said Roberts. \u201cKansas families are not secure in their health coverage. I don\u2019t know any state that is. These are not just headlines \u2013 real folks back home are hurting.\u201d\r\n\u201cWe must triage the pain this law is inflicting on hard-working Americans. We must repeal, and we will, replace this failing law.\u201d\r\n\u201cThe failings of Obamacare cannot be corrected with more government intervention, more restrictions, and more regulations. I will continue working to provide freedom from its mandates and increased taxes to all, and enact reforms to our health care system that will actually lower the cost of coverage and increase access to care for individuals. It is our job to correct it and we will continue fighting to do so.\u201d\r\nTo view or download a video of Roberts\u2019 remarks, go here.\r\nEarlier this Congress, Roberts voted in favor of and the Senate passed the Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act through budget reconciliation. Roberts warned that, \u201cWithout a strong foundation \u2013 of mandates and taxes to finance this massive overhaul \u2013 the law will likely crumble under its own weight.\u201d The bill was vetoed by the president.\r\nSince the health care reform debate in 2009, Senator Roberts has been an outspoken opponent of Obamacare. As a member of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Roberts fought against the flawed plan in both committees, and voted against the legislation on the Senate Floor. Senator Roberts, the co-chair of the Senate Rural Health Caucus, has supported several measures to repeal Obamacare in the six years since its enactment.\r\nRoberts\u2019 full remarks, as prepared, are as follows:\r\nI rise today, to share some flashbacks - or throwback Thursdays - with regards to Obamacare.\u00a0 Specifically, I want to look at the facts about Obamacare as we all know them now, more than 6 years after it was signed into law \u2013 and remind the country what the president and my colleagues across the aisle promised all of us when they pushed this bill through the Congress \u2013 without one single Republican vote. Certainly not mine.\r\nFirst \u2013 the reality. All summer long we have read the headlines about drastic premium increases being requested, insurers pulling out from different states \u2013 and patients being caught in the middle.\r\nMy state of Kansas has not been immune.\r\nLast year, United Healthcare announced it would leave our state. Aetna was going to start offering coverage next year, then announced a massive exit from exchange markets across the country \u2013 including Kansas.\r\nWe were at risk of having just one insurer in many parts of the state \u2013 with no competition on pricing.\r\nIn June, the state insurance department announced the proposed rate increases for next year.\u00a0 The good news, a new insurer \u2013 Med-ica, was proposing to offer coverage in Kansas.\u00a0\r\nThe bad news, premiums could be increased by nearly 50 percent next year for some individuals in the state.\r\nLast year, the highest approved increase was 24.5 percent.\u00a0 Next year\u2019s rates are still being finalized.\u00a0\r\nNow, let\u2019s throw it back. In 2013, President Obama said about the law, \u201cThe result is more choice, more competition, real health care security.\u201d\r\nToday, we see less choice, less competition. And with insurers coming and going and rising premiums, I think Kansas families would agree they are not secure in their health coverage.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know any state that is.\r\nThese are not just headlines in a paper or on the internet; real folks back home are hurting.\u00a0\r\nA nurse in Miltonvale wrote to me about what she calls the devastating effect Obamacare is having on her patients and loved ones. She says, \u201cI am very concerned that continuing along these lines will further limit care and accelerate a decline in health care in our state, as well as our nation.\u201d\r\nBut again, let\u2019s throw back to what we were initially promised.\r\nOn the campaign trail in 2008, then-candidate Obama promised that he would enact health reform which would lower a typical family\u2019s premiums by $2,500 per year.\u00a0 I don\u2019t foresee any way those savings could be realized if a Kansan\u2019s premium is going up over 40 percent.\r\nLooking back to 2013, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said the implementation of this law was quote, fabulous.\u00a0 Fabulous indeed.\r\nThis was of course before open enrollment started and the failed launch of the healthcare-dot-gov website.\r\nMore issues of concern to me come from recent regulations that have been issued to implement this law.\r\nThe law has two thousand pages \u2013 we are now over ten thousand pages of regulations.\r\nThe administration has proposed changing how they verify individuals as being eligible to receive taxpayer assistance for their premiums under the law.\r\nDiscrepancies between what a person claims their income is, and what is received from \u201ctrusted data sources\u201d must now be off by 25 percent \u2013 previously 10 \u2013 in order for the administration to investigate possible fraud.\r\nSo I guess you can be fraudulent up to 24.9 percent now\u2026\r\nThe administration should not be lowering the standard by which it verifies eligibility for folks to receive our scarce taxpayer dollars.\r\nIt is unacceptable for implementation of this law to further burden taxpayers by failing to protect against fraud and abuse.\r\nAnother recent regulation gets at one on my biggest fears from the law\u2019s passage, the ability of the government to ration care.\r\nThere were four provisions of the law I believed would decrease individual choice and open the door to rationing, one of which was the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation \u2013 C-M-M-I.\r\nIn March, this outfit issued a proposal to test, as the agency calls it, how we pay for prescription drugs for our seniors under Medicare Part B.\r\nPatient groups, doctors, and many of us in the Congress are gravely concerned about how this test could affect patients\u2019 quality of, and access to, care.\r\nAs the Kansas Medical Society explained to me \u2013 and I\u2019m going to quote here - this so-called demonstration \u201cwill force Kansas Medicare beneficiaries with serious, sometimes life-threatening conditions to participate, disrupt their treatment processes, and impede their access to needed medications with no evidence of improved health outcomes or finance gains for the Medicare system.\u201d\r\nSuch a so-called test is now allowable because of the rationing provisions of Obamacare.\r\nThis law simply isn\u2019t working for the large majority of Americans. Insurers are pulling out sighting large losses in covering the population of people that are seeking coverage on the exchanges.\r\nSo, Americans are left with fewer options in selecting their health coverage, and most concerning, they are paying more for it. A lot more.\r\nLooking back to December of 2015 - when this body sent legislation to the president\u2019s desk to repeal Obamacare \u2013 the president\u2019s statement of administration policy stated, \u201cThe Affordable Care Act is working.\u201d\r\nYet last month, he wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association that \u201ctoo many Americans still strain to pay for their physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles, or pay their monthly insurance bills.\u201d\u00a0\r\nMr. President, thank you for waking up to this nightmare.\r\nDespite his new revelation that the Affordable Care Act is in fact un-affordable for most, the president, and his party\u2019s candidate to succeed him, say the answer is greater government control - a public option.\r\nFolks, that is government healthcare.\r\nThe failings of Obamacare cannot be corrected with more government intervention, more restrictions, and more regulations.\r\nWe must triage the pain this law is inflicting on hard-working Americans.\r\nWe must repeal, and we will, replace this law.\r\nI will continue working to provide freedom from its mandates and increased taxes to all, and enact reforms to our health care system that will actually lower the cost of coverage and increase access to care for individuals.\r\nThe law is failing. It is our job to correct it and we will continue fighting to do so.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "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.roberts.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=7F07B400-75EF-4BFD-8DDC-B8B4E3C389D4"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.801668968051672, "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"}