On the recordJuly 10, 2012
During the debate over passage of the health care bill, ObamaCare, we heard a campaign of massive distortions. We heard it was going to create death panels--not true. We heard it was going to be a government takeover of health care. The independent PolitiFact called that the 2010 lie of the year. Now we hear it's going to wreak havoc on the economy, when the head of the Congressional Budget Office, our nonpartisan referee, just said 2 weeks ago that they don't think this bill's having any significant impact on the economy. And on and on and on. We heard from our Republican colleagues they were going to repeal and replace. We've now repealed this 31 times in the House--no replacement. And what does that mean? That's the status quo. Our colleagues make it sound like the status quo is just great in the health care system when the insurance companies got to run the show, when they got to deny kids coverage even if they had asthma or diabetes and preexisting conditions, when they got to say you're not covered if you're 22 years old, you can't stay on your parents' health care bill, when premiums doubled between 2000 and 2006 while insurance company profits quadrupled. That's what the Republicans are proposing to go back to. We continue to hear this distortion about Medicare. The reality is that we reduce some of the big taxpayer subsidies to the private Medicare plan. Some of them were being subsidized 140 percent of fee- for-service; average subsidy, 114 percent.…
