Healthcare

Floor Speech

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Thank you, Mr. President. Yogi Berra once said: ``It's like deja vu, all over again.'' Here we are feeling the echoes of the recent debates over healthcare, yet we have another Republican plan to dismantle healthcare and the peace of mind of millions of Americans coming to the floor.

We have seen previous plans. We have seen the House bill that was going to wipe out healthcare for 24 million people. We saw the bill that came over from the Senate in June wipe out healthcare for 22 million people. Then we saw the Republicans' improved version of that, wiping out healthcare for 32 million people. In July of this year, there was yet another plan, back to 22 million--millions and millions of people losing their healthcare. Now we have one more last-ditch effort to destroy healthcare for ordinary Americans, for rural Americans, for working Americans.

It is just wrong, and I am going to explain some of the reasons all of us should be outraged by this bill--this new bill, which says immediately the individual mandate and the company mandate are wiped out. What does that do? That means instantly, in 2018 and 2019, there is a destructive race to the bottom for the insurance pools. If there is no pool, if there is no mandate, then only those who are sicker sign up. Those who are sicker are more expensive, so then more people drop out of the healthcare pool, and the pool becomes even more expensive.

It just shoots right out of sight. We are not talking just about damage that would be done in 2020; we are talking about damage that would be done next year and the year after.

What happens when the insurance companies say there are only 2 years left on this, and the healthcare pool has a big hole in it, the healthy people are gushing out, and only the sickest people remain? They are going to drop out of providing coverage. Suddenly, we have hundreds of counties across the Nation with no healthcare provision for those who are currently in the healthcare marketplace.

We have been through this conversation. We have been through the Ted Cruz fake insurance bill, and it was voted down by this body with a substantial bipartisan majority. This is a repeat of that, saying let's destroy those insurance pools.

What else does this bill destroy? In 2020, it destroys the tax credits. Let's say you were fortunate enough to have the pool survive 2018 and 2019 and you have tax credits that enable you to buy insurance and there is still a provider during those 2 years, but then comes 2020, and there are no tax credits with which to buy insurance so now you are thrown out of healthcare. There is no remedy provided in this bill.

Is it possible that you are going to get covered by the Medicaid Program in your State? Well, it is not likely because Medicaid in most States provides insurance for poorer Americans, not for the folks who are getting the tax credits in the exchange. No, they are out of luck.

What else do we have? The elimination of essential benefits. Essential benefits are no longer required. Now, we have some history with this in our country. We have had those fake insurance policies that you buy that cost virtually nothing, and then you get sick and discover that your trip to the emergency room isn't covered or you discover your hospitalization is not covered. Your child gets injured-- they break a bone--and you discover the x rays are not covered, and the lab tests are not covered. Well, these are the fake insurance policies that don't belong anywhere because they are simply a fraud. This is a scam.

Why are we returning to a vote on fake insurance? Not only do we lose the individual mandate and the company mandate that makes sure an insurance pool--it is the pool having both sick and healthy people so insurance companies can actually provide insurance, but we also have this provision of this fake insurance, where you have a policy that costs virtually nothing and then covers nothing. So it is sold to those who are vulnerable by the sales pitch of the scam man.

What else does this do? Well, right now we have this very complicated healthcare system. It is a big improvement over what we had 8 years ago, but it is still complicated. We have Medicaid, and we have Medicare. We have on-exchanges, and we have off-exchanges. We have special insurance for the workplace called Workers' Compensation. We have special insurance for children called the Children's Health Insurance Program. We have workplace policies that have very good benefits covered by the company, and we have workplace policies that are very poor policies. We have workplace policies that are paid for by the company, and there are those where the individual has to buy into the workplace policy. Then, we have policies that cover just the worker and ones that cover the family. What do you do as you navigate this incredibly complex array? This is a continuous stressful journey for Americans.

Maybe you have a job that doesn't pay very much, and you are able to be on the Oregon Health Plan or on similar Medicaid programs across the country. Then, you earn a little bit more or your spouse earns a little bit more, and, suddenly, you don't qualify. How do you get onto the exchange in the middle of the year? How do you work out those tax credits for the end of the year? Or maybe your next job provides insurance for you but not your children. How do you get your children signed up? It is a very, very stressful situation--this complicated, overlapping healthcare that requires continuous attention just for people to make sure that, if their loved one is sick, if their child is injured, they will get the care they need when that happens and the family will not end up bankrupt. It is a pursuit of peace of mind.

What does this bill do? It makes our already complicated system even more complicated. It says in this bill: We want to have 50 different systems for 50 different States--so much for focusing on a simpler system where we can work to drive out any fraud or inefficiencies or abuse. No, now we have 50 systems pursuing different forms of fraud, waste, and abuse. We should be going in the other direction toward simplicity, toward a world in which, just by virtue of being an American, you know you are covered. You don't have to worry about that transition from job to job or that change as you go from one income to another income or the dynamics that occur should you get married or get divorced. No, just by virtue of being an American, you are covered.

That is the way the whole developed world does it. They make it easy, but here we make it complicated, and this bill is determined to make it much more complicated, much more fractured, and much more stressful.

So let's not do that. Let's apply a little common sense and recognize that none of us would
run a business determined to make the workplace more stressful, more fractured, less efficient, and more filled with fraud. But that is what this bill does.

So let's say no. Let's have a huge bipartisan response to say absolutely not. Now, it is grassroots America that defeated those previous diabolical plans to wipe out healthcare for millions of Americans. They filled the streets. Grassroots America overflowed our inboxes. They flooded our phones, and, once again, we need the common sense of working America, of grassroots America to weigh in and say how wrong this proposed bill is.

During the previous debate, I kept noting that this was like a monster that you can only put away by driving a stake through its heart. Each time we attempted to have that debate on the floor and we defeated the bill, I thought: Well, perhaps, we finally put this monster 6 feet under. But now it is back in all its ruthless, tooth- and-fang fury, ready to destroy peace of mind in healthcare for our citizens.

So let's take a vote in this Senate that will do what we hoped we had done before and truly drive a stake through the heart of this TrumpCare proposition. Let's stand up in partnership with our citizens.

Oh, I know this room is full of really wealthy Americans who have never worried about healthcare. When I was first campaigning for the Senate, I met with one of those really wealthy Americans in New York City. He said to me: I don't know why you are saying you are fighting for better healthcare. Everybody in America has good healthcare.

Well, that is because that individual lived in a bubble, where he was surrounded by everyone he knew having good healthcare because they worked for really wealthy firms in New York City. They are so dramatically disconnected from the reality of working Americans.

I will tell you what is going on in my neighborhood, in my blue collar neighborhood--the same neighborhood that I went to from grades 3 through 12, the same neighborhood that my children went to. It is getting tougher to find a full-time job. It is getting tougher to find a living-wage job. It is getting tougher to be able to save and to help your child pursue their dreams. It is tougher to be able to help your family or, perhaps, to go on a vacation--even a simple vacation--and it is certainly tougher to buy a home. In fact, many people in my neighborhood feel that the only way they are going to be able to buy a home is to inherit it from their parents.

But I will tell you that there is one thing that got easier in the last 8 years against all that--one thing--and that was that we provided expansion of Medicaid to cover a lot more people and we created a marketplace for insurance where working people could use tax credits to be able to buy care and to easily compare policies. So we made a big step forward in one single area--in one area. Now my colleagues from their gated communities and with their 7-digit wealth want to come and destroy the one thing we did for working Americans.

If President Trump cared one whit about a working American, he would be ringing up the majority leader of this Chamber right now and saying: What are you doing? I campaigned saying I was going to stand with workers. This bill attacks them. What are you doing? He would be calling up and saying: I called that House bill mean-- that House bill which eliminated healthcare for 23 million Americans-- the final bill. I called it mean and heartless. This is meaner. This is even more heartless.

But we shouldn't need the insights of President Trump to be able to understand the damage that this does to ordinary Americans because you can see it plain as day right there on the pages of this bill.

So, colleagues, read the bill. Talk to your healthcare experts, and drive a stake through this healthcare monster.
Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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