{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=B4FFF598-44B8-4456-83FE-5C475A29856B", "Thune Sets the Record Straight on Democrats\u2019 Health Care Spin", "2025-12-02", "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, the Democrat leader was just talking about health care, and obviously there\u2019s been a lot of conversation around that here these past few weeks and months.\n\n\u201cIn fact, the Democrats shut down the government for 43 days, the longest shutdown in history, allegedly over health care \u2013 although I think we all know that it was Trump Derangement Syndrome, more than anything else, that led to the government shutdown.\n\n\u201cBut I would just say \u2026 sometimes you have to kind of take a walk down memory lane to remind people that facts are stubborn things.\n\n\u201cAnd facts are stubborn things.\n\n\u201cThe Democrat leader implied that Republicans are not interested in lowering health care costs, and that somehow [Democrats] are.\n\n\u201cThe contrary is actually the truth.\n\n\u201cIf you look at what has happened since the Obamacare exchanges went live over 10 years ago, health care premiums on the exchanges have gone up, on average, 221 percent.\n\n\u201c221 percent increase, Mr. President, in health care premiums in the individual marketplace on the Obamacare exchanges.\n\n\u201cNow, you might ask, why is that?\n\n\u201cThere are a lot of reasons behind it.\n\n\u201cWhen they put the law into place in the first place, it was flawed structurally.\n\n\u201cBut then he referred to these so-called Biden COVID bonuses, which were the enhancements that the Democrats now want to lock into place.\n\n\u201cNow remember, this was done in 2021 with a Democrat majority, Democrat in the White House, under reconciliation \u2013 so there wasn\u2019t a single Republican who voted for these enhancements in the first place.\n\n\u201cBut remember, they were enhancements designed to be responsive to the pandemic.\n\n\u201cThey were COVID bonuses, only supposed to be temporary.\n\n\u201cAnd then in 2022 they extended them again and set them up to expire at the end of this year.\n\n\u201cThis is a problem of Democrats\u2019 making, Mr. President, pure and simple.\n\n\u201cAnd so to suggest for a moment that Republicans somehow aren\u2019t interested in lowering health care costs when, in fact, it\u2019s Democrat policies that have led to the run-up, the rampant increase, 221 percent increase in premiums since the exchanges went live over 10 years ago?\n\n\u201cYou find me anything else in our economy that\u2019s seen that kind of an increase over that same time period, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a staggering increase.\n\n\u201cAnd the Biden COVID bonuses that were enacted with all Democrat votes in 2021, and then extended again in 2022, and are set to expire at the end of this year, were, again, designed to be a response to a COVID emergency which no longer exists.\n\n\u201cSo what has happened?\n\n\u201cThey locked in the Biden COVID bonuses that are set to expire at the end of this year, and they expect Republicans now to bail them out.\n\n\u201cWell, frankly, Mr. President, Republicans are interested in things that will drive down and lower health care costs.\n\n\u201cThe other thing they did in 2022, which is sort of interesting, is that the base Obamacare policies covered people up to 400 percent of the poverty level.\n\n\u201cWell, today that\u2019s about, for a family of four, $128,000.\n\n\u201cSo in the exchanges, you could get coverage, and if your health care insurance premiums, you had a certain percentage of your income, anything above and beyond that was covered by a government subsidy.\n\n\u201cAnd that is, in fact, the way that it worked prior to 2021.\n\n\u201cThe Biden COVID bonuses took that cap off, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cThere is no cap.\n\n\u201cNo cap!\n\n\u201cAnd so now you have people making $500,000, $600,000 a year who are getting subsidies from the federal government to buy insurance.\n\n\u201cThe other thing they did, Mr. President \u2026 there\u2019s what\u2019s called zero-dollar policies, or zero-dollar premiums.\n\n\u201cIn other words, there are people out there who pay nothing for coverage.\n\n\u201cTheir coverage is entirely covered by the federal government through the subsidy.\n\n\u201cWell, what that\u2019s done, and because the way the program\u2019s structured \u2013 they structured it \u2013 is to provide the subsidies directly to insurance companies.\n\n\u201cThis is called, falsely, a premium tax credit.\n\n\u201cIt is not a tax credit.\n\n\u201cA tax credit would be something that would lower tax liability, dollar for dollar, when you file your income taxes.\n\n\u201cThis is a subsidy, a direct subsidy.\n\n\u201cAnd so you have literally millions of people \u2013 millions of people, Mr. President \u2013 who have no idea they\u2019re covered, because they aren\u2019t paying anything for it.\n\n\u201cAnd the insurance companies are getting the payment.\n\n\u201cSo the insurance companies are incentivized to go out and auto-enroll all these people across the country.\n\n\u201cAnd so what you have today are literally millions of people, of the 23 to 24 million people who get their coverage in the exchanges, millions of those have no idea that they are even covered.\n\n\u201cBecause the insurance company is getting the subsidy, auto-enrolling them, which might explain why, last year, 40 percent of the people who get their insurance coverage through the exchanges didn\u2019t file a claim.\n\n\u201cNow, you could say maybe they\u2019re healthy, maybe they\u2019re younger \u2013 that\u2019s all partially true.\n\n\u201cBut do you think 40 percent of the people in the exchanges didn\u2019t file a claim?\n\n\u201cI mean, think about that.\n\n\u201cThat means there are literally millions of people out there, millions of people who don\u2019t know they have coverage, and the insurance companies are getting the payments and making bank at the expense of everybody else in this country.\n\n\u201cAnd those who are paying premiums [are] seeing those premiums go up, as I said, 221 percent since these exchanges went live 10 years ago.\n\n\u201cSo Mr. President, this is not something the Republicans \u2013 they say, they blame the Republicans for the health care crisis.\n\n\u201cThe health care crisis was created by Democrats with all Democrat votes in 2021, and then again in 2022!\n\n\u201cSetting them up to expire at the end of this year, and with no income limits and zero-dollar premiums and the subsidies going directly to the insurance companies instead of into the pockets of the American people.\n\n\u201cNow, there is a way better way to do this, but it\u2019s going to take cooperation from both sides to do that.\n\n\u201cAnd it seems to me, at least, Mr. President, what the Democrats would rather have than a solution is an issue.\n\n\u201cThey want a political issue, and they want to blame Republicans.\n\n\u201cBut you have to come back to the basic premise that facts are stubborn things.\n\n\u201cThese are the facts.\n\n\u201c2021, these Biden COVID bonuses went into effect, lifted the cap, so no longer, there\u2019s no cap.\n\n\u201cSo you can get, you know, unlimited amounts of income and still get coverage in the exchanges.\n\n\u201cZero-dollar premiums, so some people are \u2026 paying nothing, they\u2019re paying nothing for their health insurance premiums.\n\n\u201cAnd insurance companies who are incentivized to auto-enroll those very people; in many cases, those people have no idea they\u2019re covered.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a \u2026 pretty amazing contraption, if you will \u2013 and, some would argue, scam \u2013 on behalf of the insurance companies in this country, but certainly to the detriment of the American people, who do need more affordable coverage.\n\n\u201cThey need to be able to afford health care along with the other things that they buy on a daily basis.\n\n\u201cAnd people need access to health care in this country, Mr. President, and they need affordability when it comes to health care in this country.\n\n\u201cAnd so I would say, Mr. President, that there is a path forward here.\n\n\u201cIt can\u2019t happen unless there are significant reforms, because you can\u2019t have people who are making unlimited amounts of money being able to qualify for government subsidies in these exchanges.\n\n\u201cNor should you have, in my view, people who pay absolutely nothing, not one dollar \u2013 not one dollar \u2013 for coverage, getting coverage, and insurance companies being incentivized, because they get a subsidy for doing it, to cover these very people who don\u2019t even know they\u2019re covered.\n\n\u201cThat is a really, really bizarre business model.\n\n\u201cI mean, you couldn\u2019t make this stuff up.\n\n\u201cAnd now Democrats are saying, \u2018Oh, we created this, but it\u2019s your problem. Please, please fix it. Or, if you don\u2019t \u2013 if you don\u2019t do something that will extend this program that has costs, premiums that continue to go up like this for the American people \u2013 we will use it against you in a political campaign, as a political issue.\u2019\n\n\u201cThat is the state of play right now, Mr. President, which is why we need a solution \u2013 and a solution that brings us back to where the American people have options.\n\n\u201cWhere there are some sort of income limits.\n\n\u201cWhere there are people at least paying something for their coverage.\n\n\u201cWhere the insurance companies aren\u2019t being enriched at the expense of the American people.\n\n\u201cWhere the American people have choices and options to get the plan that they want that works for them and for their families.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a business model that works \u2013 competition, optionality, market forces, driving down prices, giving the American people more choices to buy the insurance they want at a price that they can afford.\n\n\u201cThat, Mr. President, is a business model.\n\n\u201cThe business model that we\u2019re operating under today was created by the Democrats, and now there\u2019s some expectation that somehow the Republicans are supposed to come here and fix the problem that they created.\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=B4FFF598-44B8-4456-83FE-5C475A29856B"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 3.339983057230711, "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"}