May 16, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 82 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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Healthcare (Executive Session); Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 82
(Senate - May 16, 2019)
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[Pages S2914-S2915] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] Healthcare Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, across America, there are 130 million individuals who have a preexisting condition. This means individuals have a diagnosis, an illness, a medical condition that without the Affordable Care Act would likely mean they were priced out of insurance because the costs associated with their illness are so high that no insurer would provide them coverage or the cost of insurance is much higher than those who don't have that illness or that condition. These preexisting conditions don't discriminate. They affect Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, people who watch FOX News, people who watch MSNBC. This isn't a partisan issue; preexisting conditions affect everybody. In my State, give or take, 522,000 people have preexisting conditions, and I talk to them every time I go back to Connecticut. I remember 2 years ago when I was walking across the State--something I do every year. I take about a week in the summer, and I walk from one end of the State to the other end--there were families who would find out on social media where I was going to be walking that day and pre- position [[Page S2915]] themselves hours ahead of time by the side of the road so they could tell me about their diagnosis. One young woman was sobbing on the side of the road in Meriden, CT, as she explained to me her lupus diagnosis and how, without the Affordable Care Act and the protections it provides her, she would not have insurance; she would not be able to afford the medications that keep her well and alive; and her life would be ruined. Those individuals are freaking out today because they have watched this President--and frankly this Republican Congress--use every power at their disposal, every tool in their toolkit to try to take away these protections for people who are sick, for people who, through no fault of their own, just have higher medical bills than the rest of us. They don't feel like they should be discriminated against or forsaken by the health insurance marketplace because of their unfortunate diagnosis. The latest assault on people with preexisting conditions comes through an effort by the administration to allow States to sell insurance plans that don't cover basic medical needs, plans that would allow for a skimpy set of benefits to be sold out on the insurance marketplaces. Now, admittedly, that might be good news for pretty healthy people who don't want to pay for a full insurance product because they think they don't need it. The first problem with that is you are only healthy until you are not healthy. The second bigger problem is, when all the healthy people go to these skimpy plans--sometimes called junk plans--and all the people with preexisting conditions get left behind on the regulated plans, where insurance is real, where it covers everything you need, costs go down for the healthy people, and they go through the roof for the sick people, which is the entire problem we were trying to solve in 2009 and 2010. It is, in fact, the problem the Republicans say repeatedly out on the campaign trail and back in their districts and States that they want to solve too. I don't know that I have met a Republican Senator who doesn't say that they don't think people with preexisting conditions should be discriminated against. Yet this rule the administration is proposing is going to allow States to do just that. It will allow for a ``have and have not'' insurance system, in which people with preexisting conditions are charged more and people without preexisting conditions are charged less. My intention was to come down to the floor today and offer a unanimous consent request to get us on the road to solving this latest assault on people with preexisting conditions. Let me explain to you what my request was going to be. I understand there are Republican objections, and there is not the ability to object today when I make this request, so I will reserve the right to make that request until early next week. Here is the substance of the request I was planning to make today. Last week, the House of Representatives passed a piece of legislation called the Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act, and what this legislation would have done--and will do, if passed and signed by the President--is prevent HHS from taking any action to implement the administration's waivers for States to set up these junk plans, these skimpy plans. It is in keeping with the intent of the Affordable Care Act, which is to allow flexibility for States--there is an ability under the Affordable Care Act for States to innovate and to be flexible, but the Affordable Care Act says you can't do that in a way that hurts consumers. You can't do that in a way that provides less coverage to consumers. The rule the Trump administration is proposing, in many of our minds, is a violation of the Affordable Care Act in and of itself, which is still the law of the land, but this piece of legislation would clarify that you cannot allow for the development and widespread sale of these junk insurance plans without dramatically harming the healthcare of the 130 million Americans who have preexisting conditions. So my intent was to ask for a unanimous consent request to bring this bill for a vote in the Senate. I will do that next week. At some point, we have to act like we actually are the U.S. Senate. It is not enough to just say over and over again that you support people with preexisting conditions and then do nothing as the administration launches a daily, nonstop, unending, unceasing, relentless effort to destroy healthcare for people with preexisting conditions. This is the latest assault on people with preexisting conditions, but it stands in a very long, ongoing line of actions by this administration, backed up by Republicans in the Congress, to try to reduce coverage and increase costs for people with preexisting conditions. It started, of course, with the whole repeal effort, which would not have replaced the Affordable Care Act with anything meaningful. The bill that passed the House of Representatives would have stripped healthcare away from 30 million Americans. The tax bill that included a portion of healthcare repeal that was passed and signed by the President eliminates healthcare for 13 million Americans, and many of those have preexisting conditions. As we speak today, the administration is readying to go to court with a whole bunch of Republican attorneys general to ask the Federal judicial system to overturn protections for people with preexisting conditions. So having failed to get the entirety of the bill repealed through the Congress, the administration now is going to court to try to get the protections for people with preexisting conditions repealed. Once again, this Congress, this Senate is silent on that case. We have offered another piece of legislation to stop that lawsuit from going forward. We don't have any takers on the Republican side. This assault is real. I didn't make it up. It is not imagined. If this court case that the Trump administration is pushing succeeds, overnight the entirety of the Affordable Care Act will be invalidated, and there is no plan to replace it. If these junk plans go into effect--listen, maybe I will be wrong. I hope I am wrong. Maybe there will not be a flight of people to these skimpy plans, but much of the analyses I have seen suggests that will happen. If it does, there is just no way, other than for the cost to go up for everybody who is left behind on the regulated plans. I don't know about you, but when I talk to my folks living paycheck to paycheck in Connecticut, they don't have a lot of room in their budget for increased premiums for healthcare. They are maxed out as it is. So I will stand down for now, but I will be back early next week to offer this unanimous consent request. I hope, if my colleagues turn it down, if they don't want to bring up a piece of legislation that would stop this latest regulatory assault on the Affordable Care Act, that they will come to the table with other ideas as to how to protect people with preexisting conditions from this campaign of sabotage by the administration; that they will finally recognize that this assault on the Affordable Care Act in the court system is a really awful precedent to set. It is going to come back and bite all of us as legislators if it is successful. Without any real hope of a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, it leads to a humanitarian disaster in which 20 million to 30 million people lose insurance because of it. This is as important as it gets. There is very little that matters to people more than their health and their healthcare, and I hope that possibly next week we can come together as a body and finally do something about the administration's attempt to take away these protections for sick people and people with complicated diagnoses all across the country. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized. Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________
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