{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=E2DD59A1-BFAB-439D-9476-BA96A35DC307", "Thune: Health Care 101: How Democrats\u2019 Policies Fail Patients and Families", "2025-12-10", "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", "\u201c[A] three-year extension without reforms, and furthermore, a three-year extension that actually backtracks on some of the reforms that have been made earlier \u2013 and that also is in Democrats\u2019 bill \u2013 creates more fraud, more waste, more abuse, higher prices, and a higher cost for the American taxpayer.\u201d\n\nClickhereto 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, tomorrow we\u2019re going to be voting on the Democrats\u2019 partisan messaging exercise, which is their three-year extension of the Biden COVID bonuses.\n\n\u201cNow, the Democrat leader came down here yesterday, and has a number of times now, and taken anybody who is listening here in the chamber or elsewhere around the country on a tour of fantasy land.\n\n\u201cA tour of fantasy land, narrated by the Democrat leader.\n\n\u201cBecause, Mr. President, what he is saying about a Democrat plan that will lower health care costs is a fantasy.\n\n\u201cIt just is \u2013 it\u2019s a fantasy.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m going to explain to you why in just a moment.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s not any less a fantasy today than it was yesterday, than it was the day before that.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s that \u2013 it\u2019s a fantasy.\n\n\u201cNow, Mr. President, interestingly enough, the Democrat proposal, which is a three-year extension of the status quo, is an attempt to disguise the real impact of Obamacare\u2019s spiraling health care costs.\n\n\u201cSo if we do this, if we extend this for three years \u2013 at a cost of $83 billion, taxpayers, $83 billion to the taxpayers \u2013 what happens after three years?\n\n\u201cAnother three-year extension or patch as Obamacare costs continue to spiral?\n\n\u201cMr. President, during the Democrats\u2019 shutdown, one Democrat senator came to the floor, 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 was his quote, Mr. President.\n\n\u201c\u2018We did fail to bring down the cost of healthcare.\u2019\n\n\u201cAnd so what is the Democrat answer to that failure, Mr. President?\n\n\u201cAn extension of the status quo, while health care costs continue to spiral for the American people.\n\n\u201cNow, Mr. President, I\u2019m going to show you here, first off, where most people get their health insurance coverage in this country.\n\n\u201cSo you\u2019ve got, in the individual marketplace, which is the blue here, almost 50 percent of Americans \u2013 that\u2019s about 150 million Americans \u2013 who get their health care coverage through their employer.\n\n\u201cSo they\u2019re in the small group plan, the large group plan, but it\u2019s something that when they get their job, they get health care coverage.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ve got another almost 40 percent of the population \u2013 about 140 million Americans \u2013 who get it through Medicaid, 21 percent, as you can see; Medicare, about 15 percent.\n\n\u201cAnd then the balance here, some are uninsured, and then there are some who get it in the non-group market. There\u2019s a sliver there for the military.\n\n\u201cBut in this non-group individual market, Mr. President, that\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about here, we\u2019re talking about that sliver right there.\n\n\u201cSo remember again, 150 million Americans, almost 50 percent, get their coverage through their employer.\n\n\u201cAnother almost 40 percent \u2013 140 million Americans \u2013 get theirs through Medicare or Medicaid.\n\n\u201cAnd then this little sliver right here, which represents about 23 to 24 million Americans are in the Obamacare exchanges.\n\n\u201cNow I, just as a point of fact, want to show you, next slide, what\u2019s actually happened in those various markets.\n\n\u201cOf course, Medicare and Medicaid is something that the federal government, those are programs that have been in place for a really long time.\n\n\u201cBut if you look at what\u2019s happened in the Consumer Price Index since 2014, so let\u2019s take this stretch right here, that\u2019s the blue line.\n\n\u201cThe blue line is how much costs have gone up in our economy overall.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s about 39 percent over the past 10, 11, 12 years.\n\n\u201cAnd then if you look at what\u2019s happened in the employer-provided market \u2013 remember I just said that about 50 percent, almost, 150 million Americans, get their health insurance coverage in the employer-provided marketplace.\n\n\u201cIn other words, they\u2019re in a small group plan or a large group plan, and that rate of insurance increase \u2013 although way too high, I would argue \u2013 over that same 10- or 11-year period is 68 percent.\n\n\u201cSo, Consumer Price Index is 39 percent, the large group market, employer market, went up at 69 percent \u2013 so what do you think the premium cost increase was in the individual marketplace, in the Obamacare exchange?\n\n\u201cMr. President, it went up 129 percent, and that\u2019s since 2014.\n\n\u201cIf you go back to 2013, it\u2019s gone up 221 percent, because insurance companies, when this program was introduced, automatically significantly increased and boosted their rates.\n\n\u201cSo today, if you\u2019re in the individual marketplace, this is how much your insurance rates have gone up since Obamacare, since its inception a little over a decade ago.\n\n\u201cThat, Mr. President, is double \u2013 double \u2013 the rate of increase in the employer-provided marketplace, and triple \u2013 triple \u2013 the CPI, which is the cost we pay for everything else out there.\n\n\u201cSo the idea that this has made health care less costly and more affordable for people in the Obama exchanges is just a fantasy.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a fantasy.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s go to the next chart here.\n\n\u201cSo, what has happened as a result of that?\n\n\u201cYou have this dramatic increase in the individual marketplace, in the Obamacare exchange \u2013 which is, like I said, double what you would get if you were getting your insurance from your employer in the marketplace.\n\n\u201cSo, what\u2019s happened?\n\n\u201cA lot of employers, particularly small employers \u2013 let\u2019s take the 25- to 49-employee small business \u2013 what is happening in that marketplace?\n\n\u201cSo, a lot of those companies used to offer their employees insurance.\n\n\u201cAnd that insurance, as I pointed out, is about half of the cost of increase over this time period that you would get in the individual marketplace, in the Obamacare exchanges.\n\n\u201cSo, what\u2019s happened is people in this market \u2013 and this is, again, 25 to 49 employees, who, up until a few years ago, actually did, in many cases, try and provide some sort of health care coverage for their employees \u2013 what they are now doing is they are dropping coverage.\n\n\u201cLook what\u2019s happened.\n\n\u201cFrom 2010 it went from 92 percent, in 2020 down to 70 percent, and then in 2025 down to 64 percent.\n\n\u201cSo the employer marketplace is shrinking.\n\n\u201cWhy is that? That\u2019s a good question, right?\n\n\u201cSo, why would people be dropping out of the employee marketplace and going into the individual exchanges?\n\n\u201cWell, I think the answer is pretty obvious.\n\n\u201cIf you are an employer or you\u2019re an employee, and you can get into a marketplace where the government is subsidizing your premiums \u2013 if you\u2019re an employer, they\u2019re just responding to, obviously, what most employers do, and that\u2019s a way to reduce their cost and to transfer that cost to the federal government.\n\n\u201cSo the employer market, particularly the small business market, is shrinking.\n\n\u201cAt the same time, the Obamacare market is expanding, and expanding pretty dramatically, and premium costs about double of what you would see in the employer marketplace.\n\n\u201cSo let\u2019s go to the next chart.\n\n\u201cAnd the thing that you\u2019ve got to remember here, Mr. President, is, if you look at \u2013 this was promised at the time when Obamacare was being debated, and I happened to be here at the time, that this was actually going to reduce costs.\n\n\u201cThis was going to score as an overall savings to the federal government.\n\n\u201cHere is what, in the exchanges now, what Obamacare actually costs.\n\n\u201cYou can see [it] dramatically increased right about here when the enhanced subsidies, the Biden COVID bonuses passed by the Democrats, not a single Republican vote in 2021, and then extended in 2022, set to expire this year \u2013 this, all of their own making.\n\n\u201cI mean, somehow they have tried to shift the narrative here, that this is somehow a problem of Republicans\u2019 making.\n\n\u201cThey set the expiration date, and they passed the legislation in 2021 and 2022 that led to this explosion in costs.\n\n\u201cAnd so now, the 10-year score on this program, the 10-year score on this program is now $1.3 trillion.\n\n\u201c$1.3 trillion [cost] to the taxpayers, to subsidize, in the individual marketplace, the 23 or 24 million Americans who receive their coverage there.\n\n\u201cThat is, that\u2019s just flat staggering. Look at that.\n\n\u201cSo we\u2019re looking at \u201824, \u201825 now, 150 billion a year over a 10-year period, as I said, it ends up being, it\u2019s been scored by the CBO at about $1.3 trillion.\n\n\u201cBut here\u2019s what happened: The spending went up dramatically when the very issue that we\u2019re talking about here today, which is these Biden COVID bonuses.\n\n\u201cThey were designed to be in response to the pandemic when they were enacted in 2021.\n\n\u201cNow, in 2021 as most people remember, we were kind of past the pandemic, and that particular legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act \u2013 so-called Inflation Reduction Act, obviously not the case \u2013 passed in August of 2021.\n\n\u201cWe were well past the pandemic, but it gave the Democrats an excuse to put more federal money into a failing program that is driving up costs and increasing, dramatically, costs to the federal taxpayer.\n\n\u201cAnd then in 2022, \u2026 they still had the majority, and so they said, \u2018Well, let\u2019s extend this thing.\u2019\n\n\u201cSo they extend it.\n\n\u201cI should say, 2021 was, I think, American Rescue Plan; 2022 was the Inflation Reduction Act.\n\n\u201cBut they decided to extend this program and these Biden COVID bonuses \u2013 which, in 2022, as I recall, the pandemic was pretty well past us, right?\n\n\u201cSo they decided, \u2018Well, let\u2019s keep this thing going. This is such a great deal. You know, we\u2019re passing all these costs on the American taxpayer. And we can go to people in the marketplace and tell them, \u201cWe\u2019re reducing your premiums.\u201d\u2019\n\n\u201cSo that\u2019s what\u2019s happened.\n\n\u201cNow, go to the next chart here.\n\n\u201cNow, interestingly enough, this is another, I think, effect of all this, and this is what has happened in this marketplace, again, just an example.\n\n\u201cBecause, the way this thing is structured, now \u2013 and this is ironic to me, because I\u2019ve always thought of Democrats as, you know \u2026 at least their narrative is they stand up to big business, they stand up for the little guy, you know, the person out there that\u2019s struggling to make ends meet \u2013 and yet, the way this program is structured, the payments go directly to the insurance companies.\n\n\u201cSo the insurance companies are incentivized to get more people into these programs, because when they do, they get paid by the federal government.\n\n\u201cAnd there are a couple other features about this plan today, Mr. President, that make this thing even more, I think, staggering to the American people, and [one] is that there are no income caps.\n\n\u201cNow, another feature of the Democrats\u2019 narrative is that \u2026 \u2018We want to be for the little guy, for the guy who\u2019s trying to make it out there, you know, the person that\u2019s really struggling to get by, lower-income category.\u2019\n\n\u201cBut what this does is this forces hard-working taxpayers, people who are out there trying to get by, to subsidize the insurance costs of affluent, wealthy people.\n\n\u201cWhy?\n\n\u201cBecause in 2021, they took off the income caps.\n\n\u201cThere are no income caps on this program!\n\n\u201cIt used to be 400 percent of poverty, which for a family of four, is about 128,000 a year.\n\n\u201cThey took the caps completely off, blew the caps up!\n\n\u201cSo now, you\u2019ve got people making five, 600,000 a year, who are getting subsidies from people who are making $25,000 a year in this marketplace.\n\n\u201cThat, Mr. President, is pretty remarkable.\n\n\u201cPretty stunning, really.\n\n\u201cAnd so you have insurance companies, big insurance companies, being the beneficiaries, and affluent people with no income caps in this program.\n\n\u201cBut the other feature of the program is this: There are zero-dollar premiums.\n\n\u201cAnd so what does that mean?\n\n\u201cThere are a lot of people who are getting covered by insurance companies because they meet the eligibility requirements, who aren\u2019t paying anything for coverage.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s no premium whatsoever.\n\n\u201cThese are, we call them zero-dollar premiums, and those have exploded.\n\n\u201cAnd one of the reasons they\u2019ve exploded is because an insurance company can say, \u2018I found somebody in this particular population group who meets these criteria, these eligibility; we\u2019re signing them up.\u2019\n\n\u201cAnd since they don\u2019t have to pay a premium, they don\u2019t even know they\u2019re covered.\n\n\u201cSo what\u2019s happened in the past few years?\n\n\u201cThe number of people who haven\u2019t filed claims, literally, since 2021 has tripled.\n\n\u201cNow, as I\u2019ve said before, there are lots of reasons why people don\u2019t file claims.\n\n\u201cYou might have a good, healthy year.\n\n\u201cYou may be a younger person who doesn\u2019t have health issues.\n\n\u201cBut the fact of the matter that you would see from 2021 when they made this change to take the lid off of income, to create zero-dollar premiums, and then to see this explode, the number of people who didn\u2019t file a claim tripled \u2013 tripled \u2013 in the last four years.\n\n\u201cNow, what does that suggest?\n\n\u201cI would argue, Mr. President, it suggests that there are a lot of people out there who have no idea that they\u2019re even covered.\n\n\u201cThey have no idea they have coverage because they\u2019re not paying anything for it, and the insurance company is incentivized to auto-enroll because they are getting the payment directly from the American taxpayer.\n\n\u201cThat, Mr. President, is how this program is structured.\n\n\u201cAnd that, Mr. President, is why it is never going to reduce costs.\n\n\u201cInsurance companies are incentivized to increase premiums.\n\n\u201cBusinesses are incentivized to, you know, push people out of their marketplace into the individual marketplace where the taxpayers will subsidize the premiums, the cost of health care.\n\n\u201cAnd then what you get is a dramatic run-up in health care costs, an explosion in health care costs.\n\n\u201cAnd again, I just want to put that \u2026 second chart \u2026 which shows the difference in these different marketplaces.\n\n\u201cSo this number right here, Mr. President, the orange number, that is the individual marketplace. That\u2019s the Obamacare exchanges.\n\n\u201cThis is the employer market \u2013 half \u2013 half the cost.\n\n\u201cWell, again, if the taxpayers are paying the premiums, the incentives are all there to continue to run up the costs.\n\n\u201cMr. President, this is nothing more than a failed program, partly because it is a failed structure with no incentives to reduce costs.\n\n\u201cAnd where insurance companies decide to cover you, you may not even know you have coverage.\n\n\u201cIn which high-income people, people making $500,000, $600,000 a year, can go into this marketplace and get subsidies from the federal taxpayers, from people who are making $25,000 to $30,000, $35,000 a year.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what we are talking about.\n\n\u201cThat is the fantasy land that the Democrats are trying to take the American people for a tour of.\n\n\u201cSo, Mr. President, we will vote on that, the extension, the three-year extension, with no reforms.\n\n\u201cAnd by the way, and I don\u2019t have the chart here, but the Government Accountability Office \u2026 did a study of this marketplace, and \u2026 they submitted fraudulent claims.\n\n\u201cIn other words, they got people to submit to try and get into the program.\n\n\u201cThey tried to get into the program, and what the Government Accountability Office found was that 95 percent of these got enrolled by the insurance companies.\n\n\u201cThat audit was not done two years ago, five years ago \u2013 that audit was just released last week.\n\n\u201cThe Government Accountability Office said that, in their survey population \u2013 they looked at a group of people, a population \u2013 and found that 95 percent of these people that the insurance company signed up were fraudulent.\n\n\u201cSo you have a program that is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse.\n\n\u201cSo what would you think you would want to do?\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s, I would think, what I would want to do if I were them and I actually wanted to fix this thing, I would be interested in reforming it.\n\n\u201cI\u2019d be looking at some income caps.\n\n\u201cI\u2019d do away with zero-dollar premiums.\n\n\u201cI\u2019d figure out a way to structure this so the money isn\u2019t going to the insurance companies.\n\n\u201cBut that\u2019s not what they did.\n\n\u201cThey just said, \u2018We\u2019re going to extend this for three years\u2019 \u2013 at a cost, I might add, of $83 billion, scored by the CBO.\n\n\u201cNo changes. Just continue to run up the cost, run up the cost in the individual marketplace like that, but have the American taxpayers pay for it and then go tell people that you\u2019re trying to keep their premiums down.\n\n\u201cThis does nothing \u2013 nothing \u2013 to lower the cost of health insurance, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cAnd so Republicans will offer up something as an alternative.\n\n\u201cAnd just as a point of fact, it has some, contains some provisions in it, which tries to move us away from a couple of the features of the Obamacare exchanges.\n\n\u201cOne is it tries to get the money in the hands of the American people.\n\n\u201cAnd by doing that, creating health savings accounts where money flows into the health savings accounts that individuals control, rather than having it controlled by the insurance companies.\n\n\u201cNow, you\u2019d still get your insurance in the marketplace, but now you would have more dollars at your discretion to decide how you are going to use them.\n\n\u201cInstead of taking a silver plan in the Obamacare exchange, you might take a bronze plan.\n\n\u201cA bronze plan would mean you\u2019re paying less for it \u2013 sometimes might have a higher deductible, but with the proposal that we\u2019re going to put forward, there would be money coming in to these HSAs that the individual would control.\n\n\u201cSo it\u2019s about individual control versus government control, first and foremost.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s also about actually lowering costs.\n\n\u201cNow, interestingly enough, if you put the next chart up there, and this will be too small for most people who are trying to watch this \u2013 although there\u2019re probably not many on television.\n\n\u201cBut it also has the advantage of scoring a savings.\n\n\u201cSo the proposal we\u2019re going to put on the floor will actually reduce premiums, according to Congressional Budget Office, by about 10 to 11 percent.\n\n\u201cSo, double-digit reduction in premiums, double-digit reduction in premiums under this proposal, and save some taxpayers\u2019 money.\n\n\u201cIt scores as a $30 billion savings.\n\n\u201cNow, instead of taking that $30 billion and giving it to the insurance companies, what we would suggest here is that you actually do let the American people \u2013 the consumer, the patient, if you will \u2013 manage this and have these dollars available to them at their discretion.\n\n\u201cThat, Mr. President, is a very different business model than what is being offered up by the Democrats.\n\n\u201cIt also has the added advantage of actually, as a matter of scoring by the Congressional Budget Office, reducing premiums.\n\n\u201cReducing premiums, something that their plan will never, ever be able to say.\n\n\u201cAnd this is the average reduction in premiums across the country, state by state.\n\n\u201cAnd like I said, it\u2019s going to be too far away for you to see, but in my state of South Dakota, it\u2019s going to reduce them by $900, and that\u2019s pretty much going to be true everywhere.\n\n\u201cNow, we can do a lot better, if we can continue to make some of these reforms and changes in these programs and get those premium rates even lower.\n\n\u201cBut I would argue that, actually, a reduction, a double-digit reduction in premiums \u2013 relative to what they\u2019re offering up, which is a dramatic, dramatic increase in spending, increase in premiums, increase in costs, which goes on indefinitely.\n\n\u201cThis is a three-year extension with no reforms.\n\n\u201cDoesn\u2019t adjust income limits. You can still get unlimited income, still qualify in the exchanges.\n\n\u201cDoesn\u2019t do anything about zero-dollar premiums, and continues to incentivize insurance companies to auto-enroll people, many of whom will never know they\u2019re enrolled.\n\n\u201cThe insurance company is getting paid and this program continues to drive up costs in the individual marketplace \u2013 which, as I said, is about double what it is in the employer marketplace.\n\n\u201cSo, you tell me: Is that the bet you want to make?\n\n\u201cNow, the Democrats seem hard over on doing this, and I understand, there\u2019s a lot of pressure \u2013 \u2018Just do it, just do it, just extend it.\u2019\n\n\u201cBut a three-year extension without reforms, and furthermore, a three-year extension that actually backtracks on some of the reforms that have been made earlier \u2013 and that also is in their bill \u2013 creates more fraud, more waste, more abuse, higher prices, and a higher cost for the American taxpayer.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty bad bet, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what this is all about for them.\n\n\u201cThe question is, you want the government deciding this?\n\n\u201c[Or do] you want to put this power and these resources into the hands of the American people, American taxpayers, patients?\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re about, Mr. President, and so when we have that vote tomorrow, that\u2019s what\u2019s at stake.\n\n\u201cLike I said, I don\u2019t have any expectation, probably, that we\u2019re going to get Democrat votes for our proposal, but we are offering something that actually does reduce health care costs and premiums, puts power back in the hands of individuals.\n\n\u201cAnd that really is what this ought to be about.\n\n\u201cIt ought to be about the American people being able to buy the insurance that they want, the coverage they want, at a price that they can afford.\n\n\u201cSo, Mr. President, that\u2019ll be the vote tomorrow.\n\n\u201cAnd thank you all for indulging me in walking through a little bit about the history of this, because sometimes it\u2019s been very color-coded by our colleagues on the other side.\n\n\u201cBut this is real.\n\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t a fantasy.\n\n\u201cWhat they\u2019ve described for you the past few days here is a fantasy.\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=E2DD59A1-BFAB-439D-9476-BA96A35DC307"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.5705909356474876, "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"}