Johnny Isakson: “first of all, I want to acknowledge the great intellect that the Senator from Louisiana brings to the debate, the…”

“first of all, I want to acknowledge the great intellect that the Senator from Louisiana brings to the debate, the experience he has in the health care field, how much I personally have learned from him on the committee in the work we do, and I thank him for the contribution he makes to the Senate. I rise to talk a little bit about how we got to where we are today, what we are about to do, and where we need to end up. It will be short, and it will be sweet, but it will be to the point. I was here in 2009 when we passed ObamaCare. In fact, as the Presiding Officer will remember, it was at 9 o'clock in the morning on Christmas Eve in 2009. I opposed it at that time for a particular reason. The reason was that I saw it driving us toward a single-payer health care system, which I personally opposed. But the votes were there. It passed, and it passed on the promise that if you liked your doctor, you could keep him; if you liked your insurance, you could keep it. And because everybody is going to be insured, rates will go down and everything is going to be wonderful. What has happened over the last 8 years has been pretty incredible. Rates have gone up tremendously. People have not been able to keep their insurance. We find ourselves on the cusp of being forced to a government single-payer health care system because the private markets are collapsing.…”