{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=119DF495-7856-4A9D-9FFB-B36DDE4A408D", "Thune: Democrats\u2019 Messaging Bill Won\u2019t Fix Skyrocketing Health Care Costs", "2025-12-11", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Clickhereto watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor:\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cMr. President, later today we will vote on the Democrats\u2019 partisan messaging bill \u2013 which is a clean, three-year extension of the Biden COVID bonuses.\n\n\u201cAnd when I say \u2018clean,\u2019 all I mean by that is no reforms. Straight-up extension.\n\n\u201cThree years of a program without any reforms, any revisions, any changes that would actually help drive down health care costs instead of increasing health care costs and get rid of the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse in this program.\n\n\u201cThe Democrats\u2019 \u2018plan,\u2019 that the Democrat leader called it on the floor the other day, it\u2019s their \u2018plan.\u2019\n\n\u201cApparently they think that a three-year extension with no reforms, to try and disguise the real impact of Obamacare\u2019s spiraling costs, is actually a \u2018plan.\u2019\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know how you can call it a plan.\n\n\u201cI came down here yesterday, Mr. President, to talk at length about some of the many problems with Obamacare and the perverse incentives it provides to move employees off of employer-provided insurance and into taxpayer-subsidized plans that have rampant year-over-year increases in premiums.\n\n\u201cThe perverse incentives that it provides to insurance companies to enroll Americans \u2013 some of whom don\u2019t even know that they\u2019ve been enrolled \u2013 so that the insurance companies can rake in even more subsidies.\n\n\u201cAnd then, this so-called plan is rampant \u2013 and I say rampant \u2013 with fraud and abuse.\n\n\u201cMr. President, a Government Accountability Office report released just last week found a whole host of problems, including the successful enrollment of fake individuals, Social Security number fraud, failure to verify or sometimes even request documentation, improper payment of subsidies, and the list goes on.\n\n\u201cAnd I want you to just take a look at this.\n\n\u201cThis is the finding that came out of that study that was done by the Government Accountability Office, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cAnd here was the conclusion: Obamacare subsidies granted without documentation to 90 percent of fake accounts set up by a government watchdog.\n\n\u201c90 percent.\n\n\u201cNot 10 percent. Not 5 percent.\n\n\u201cI mean, if you had a program that had 10 percent fraud in it, I think that would be a huge red flag, right?\n\n\u201cWouldn\u2019t you be alarmed by that?\n\n\u201cI think most people would.\n\n\u201cI think most people would go, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s a huge number. We need to do something to fix that.\u2019\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cThink about that. My aching back, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t make this stuff up.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re talking about tens of billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse on a yearly basis.\n\n\u201cThey don\u2019t want to do anything about it.\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cWell, Mr. President, that\u2019s obviously a huge problem, but I haven\u2019t even gotten to the central problem, and that is that Obamacare has utterly failed to control health care costs.\n\n\u201cSince 2013, Obamacare enrollees have seen a 221 percent increase in premiums.\n\n\u201cNow, let me just repeat that, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cSince 2013, Obamacare enrollees have seen a 221 percent increase in premiums.\n\n\u201c221 percent.\n\n\u201cThat means Obamacare premiums have grown at approximately five times the rate of inflation.\n\n\u201cSo, so much for making health care more affordable.\n\n\u201cNow, Mr. President, this graph, I think, illustrates that.\n\n\u201cAnd actually this understates the problem, because this shows since 2014, in the first year of its inception, when the Obama exchanges went live, there was a huge increase that the insurance companies built in in their premium cost to cover all the things that they had to cover in the new program.\n\n\u201cSo since 2013, that number is 221 percent, but even since 2014 when the exchanges were fully up and operating, it\u2019s had 129 percent increase in premiums at the same time that the group market \u2013 in other words, the large and small group market, where a lot of people get their insurance coverage through their employer \u2013 was going up at about half that rate.\n\n\u201c68 percent in the small and large group market, which is where about 150 million people get their insurance.\n\n\u201cAnd frankly, the more people we could push into that market, it will not only lower their costs, but it also spreads the risk among a bigger pool, and that ultimately is the way in the long term you want to spread your costs.\n\n\u201cBut what Obamacare does, because it uses taxpayer dollars to subsidize and pay insurance companies directly, premiums go directly to insurance companies, so insurance companies are making bank. They\u2019re getting rich by this.\n\n\u201cBut what it does at the same time is there\u2019s no incentive to control costs, and it\u2019s pushing people into that market.\n\n\u201cBecause if you\u2019re an employer \u2013 or an employee, for that matter, because most people respond to incentives \u2013 and you are told that you can get into a market where the taxpayers are going to cover it, the employer is going to say, \u2018Well, why should I continue to pay for the health insurance coverage for my employees if I can have the taxpayers pay for it?\u2019\n\n\u201cAnd so it\u2019s pushing more and more people out of the group market, this market right here, where there\u2019s a 68 percent increase, still way too much, over the last decade.\n\n\u201cThey\u2019re pushing more and more people out of that market, into this market, which is double the rate of increase in premiums \u2013 and that doesn\u2019t include, as I said, the first year in its inception.\n\n\u201cIf you \u2026 add that first year back in there, that number is 221 percent.\n\n\u201cSo you\u2019ve got this system that is pushing more and more people into insurance coverage where the rates are skyrocketing, where the payments are going directly to the insurance companies, and where lower-income taxpayers are subsidizing higher-income taxpayers because there are no income limits.\n\n\u201cSo now you can have people making $500,000, $600,000 a year are getting subsidized by the federal taxpayer, people making $40,000 or $50,000 a year, at a cost to the federal taxpayer, in their bill alone, which is just a three-year extension, of $83 billion.\n\n\u201cYou tell me in what universe that makes sense.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s astonishing.\n\n\u201cTo have a program where 90 percent of the people who were fraudulently enrolled got approved, a program where the rate of increase is twice the rate in the group market and three times the rate of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, over the same time period.\n\n\u201cAnd the insurance companies are getting rich.\n\n\u201cLower-income taxpayers are footing the bill so more affluent Americans can have coverage.\n\n\u201cAnd the American taxpayer is paying $83 billion just for the three-year extension.\n\n\u201cWaste, fraud, and abuse, higher rates, fiscally irresponsible, and the list goes on.\n\n\u201cWell, Mr. President, even Democrats have to be well aware of the fact that Obamacare has utterly failed to do what it promised.\n\n\u201cAs I mentioned yesterday, we had one Democrat senator come down to the floor during the shutdown, and, to his credit, he admitted the truth, and this is what he said.\n\n\u201cHe said, \u2018We did fail to bring down the cost of healthcare.\u2019\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a direct quote.\n\n\u201c\u2018We did fail to bring down the cost of healthcare.\u2019\n\n\u201cSo what are Democrats proposing to do about that failure?\n\n\u201cAs I said, exactly nothing!\n\n\u201cDemocrats\u2019 so-called \u2018plan\u2019 is a three-year extension of the status quo.\n\n\u201cNo reforms. No revisions. No rethinking of the way that Obamacare works.\n\n\u201cJust a three-year extension of the status quo \u2013 which, I might add, was put in place in response to the pandemic!\n\n\u201cWhen they extended these subsidies back in 2022 \u2013 it was in August \u2013 the pandemic was long over, long over.\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t, as I said, you can\u2019t make this stuff up.\n\n\u201cSo, [Democrats\u2019 bill is] not going to do anything to address the perverse incentives that push Americans out of the employer-sponsored health care system and onto taxpayer-subsidized plans.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not going to do anything to address the perverse incentives that encourage insurance companies to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense.\n\n\u201cIt will do nothing to address the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse in Obamacare.\n\n\u201cAnd most of all, Mr. President, it will do nothing to bring down health care costs.\n\n\u201cNothing.\n\n\u201cZero.\n\n\u201cNow, under Democrats\u2019 plan, insurance premiums will continue to spiral, American taxpayers will find themselves on the hook for ever-increasing subsidy payments \u2013 and don\u2019t think that all those payments are going to be going to vulnerable Americans.\n\n\u201cAs I said, the Democrats\u2019 decision to remove any income cap on the Biden COVID bonuses has Americans making as much as half a million dollars, or more, qualifying for taxpayer subsidies.\n\n\u201cHalf a million dollars.\n\n\u201cDo Democrats really think middle-class families should be subsidizing health care premiums for those making half a million dollars?\n\n\u201cMr. President, Democrats don\u2019t have a health care plan.\n\n\u201cThey want to extend the status quo \u2013 a failed, flawed fraud program that is increasing costs at three times the rate of inflation.\n\n\u201cNow, on the other hand, Mr. President, Republicans today will offer something that does \u2013 does \u2013 actually lower costs.\n\n\u201cEarlier this week we introduced legislation \u2013 drafted by the chairmen of the relevant committees, Senators Crapo and Cassidy \u2013 to make structural reforms to the individual health insurance market.\n\n\u201cIn contrast to the Democrat bill, our bill would actually lower, as I said, Obamacare premium costs.\n\n\u201cAnd it would redirect government savings from the bill into health savings accounts for eligible Obamacare enrollees earning less than 700 percent of the federal poverty level, paired with some affordable insurance plans.\n\n\u201cThese accounts would help individuals to meet their out-of-pocket costs, and \u2013 for many individuals who don\u2019t use their insurance, or who barely use it \u2013 it would allow them to save for health care expenses down the road.\n\n\u201cSo we have two paths here, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cOne, a plan to start addressing the spiraling health care costs in Obamacare and make structural reforms that would drive down premium prices.\n\n\u201cAnd two, a proposal for a three-year extension of the status quo.\n\n\u201cSo you tell me who\u2019s serious about actually addressing the affordability of health care.\n\n\u201cDemocrats may talk about helping Americans.\n\n\u201cBut their bill is nothing more than a political messaging exercise that they hope they can use against Republicans next November.\n\n\u201cAnd so I hope that after today, they\u2019ll feel like they\u2019ve checked the messaging box and will get serious about actually doing something about the spiraling health care costs under Obamacare.\n\n\u201cRepublicans are ready to get to work, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not sure yet that Democrats are interested.\u201d", 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.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=119DF495-7856-4A9D-9FFB-B36DDE4A408D"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.163718920201063, "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"}