SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this 51st attempt to repeal the ACA by stopping the individual mandate is part of the long-term propaganda campaign done by the Republicans to destroy the health care plan that the President put together.

They know that we agree on the policy--everybody here agrees on the policy--but they put a poison pill in it. They knew that this amendment of how to pay for it--that is, by delaying the mandate--would kill any Democratic support in the House. They have no intention of passing this bill. This bill is directed at the propaganda campaign to the people at Koch Brothers and at FOX News so that anybody who is watching this will get the idea that somehow it is a bad bill.

The fact is that people are benefiting every single day. The AARP and the American Medical Association have denounced this bill because they want the SGR--the doctors' payment reform--to go through, and they know that the Republicans have designed this to fail.

A mandate that has been supported even by the Tea Party--before the Tea Party said ``we have got to be against it''--is what is at issue here. Doctors and health insurance companies will not be able to operate if you don't have an individual mandate. The Republicans said this. The Heritage Institute said it. Everybody said it, but they want to kill it.

This is an alternative universe that we are creating with this propaganda campaign. We see wild claims about people who live in inner cities in that they are somehow worthless and that they don't want to take care of their families and feed them, and we hear things coming out of the Speaker's office that clearly aren't true about the ACA.

Let's suppose that actually happened. What would happen if we repealed and destroyed the ACA today?

We would get rid of 13 million people on the rolls by 2018. We would take away health insurance. Health insurance premiums would rise 10 to 20 percent by 2018. Millions of Americans would not be able to afford the health care they need.

This is a failure of leadership. They would rather run a propaganda campaign to hold onto the House. We watched in Florida just in the last week when $13 million, I guess, was spent on that campaign to tar the Affordable Care Act. That is what this is all about. No one should be the least bit confused. That is not what America wants. America wants health security.

Vote ``no'' on this bill.

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