[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 162 (Thursday, November 14, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H7106-H7108]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1915
                               OBAMACARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the

[[Page H7107]]

gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) for 30 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, the decisions we make in this body matter to 
the people in this country. They matter to families. When Obama and the 
Democrats in Congress, with no Republican votes, chose to radically 
alter health care--something that impacts every American and 
compromises one-sixth of the United States economy--the effects extend 
well beyond committee hearing rooms, courtrooms, and government office 
suites. The effects are felt in doctors' offices. They are felt in 
homes across the Fifth District I represent. They are felt by moms and 
dads who are finding out the health care that they had counted on 
keeping, insurance they had budgeted for and know they can afford, 
won't be around next year.
  Earlier this month, it was estimated that 160,000 North Carolinians 
received that unwelcome news. My constituent Dawn from Wilkes County is 
one of them. She wrote to me to tell me exactly how Washington's 
interference with her health care is affecting her. Let me let Dawn 
speak for herself.

       Dear Representative Foxx: Never in my life have I been 
     without health insurance. I am writing to share with you the 
     impact of the Affordable Care Act on my health care options.
       I work part-time and purchase my own health insurance. In 
     order have an affordable monthly premium and to have the 
     possibility of budgeting for dental and vision care as well 
     as general medical care, I have had a high-deductible health 
     savings account, HSA, for several years.
       The Affordable Care Act has eliminated my current HSA with 
     BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina. I currently have an 
     annual deductible of $5,000 and a monthly premium of $160.30.
       The ACA-compliant replacement policy which I have been 
     offered by BlueCross BlueShield will have a $5,500 annual 
     deductible and will cost $478.60 per month. Even with a 10 
     percent higher deductible, this new plan will cost $318.30 
     per month more than what I can now afford. That is a 198 
     percent increase--almost three times what I now pay--for a 
     plan with a higher deductible. Please help me understand how 
     this is affordable care.
       My husband and I do not have cable or satellite television, 
     high-speed Internet, smartphones, or other optional services 
     which we can cancel in order to pay the astounding increase 
     in my health insurance premium. We do qualify for a partial 
     subsidy to help cover the premium, but that does not change 
     the $5,743.20 annual price for this meager health insurance 
     policy. It merely shifts part of the expense to our children 
     and some other taxpayers.
       I have spoken with representatives in the health care 
     exchange and www.healthcare.gov and with independent 
     insurance brokers, but they offer little hope. Do I have any 
     option in order to continue to live within my means and 
     afford to pay for my own health care? I am truly bewildered.
           Sincerely,
                                                             Dawn.

  Mr. Speaker, reading Dawn's letter breaks my heart. This is a woman 
who plans ahead. She budgets carefully. She takes pride in her work and 
responsibility for herself and for her family. ObamaCare is changing 
things drastically for her and millions of other Americans like her.
  With about a month to go before the Affordable Care Act renders her 
current health insurance illegal, Dawn is left with questions, the last 
of which I will repeat again:
  Is it possible to live within my means and afford to pay for my own 
health care?
  Americans took the President at his word when he said they would be 
able to keep the care and doctors they liked. They trusted that a law 
called the Affordable Care Act would actually make health care more 
affordable. They believed that the President wouldn't raise taxes on 
the middle class through this law.
  Mr. Speaker, the President's broken promises are hurting families 
like Dawn's, but the higher premiums and the canceled plans are central 
to ObamaCare. The law will work only if many Americans are compelled to 
leave their current plans and pay more for government-approved 
insurance.
  Now, as the country is becoming better acquainted with this very sad 
reality, Democrats and Republicans in Washington must recognize that 
repeal is still the only way to solve all of ObamaCare's problems.
  The answer to America's health care challenges is not going to be 
found in 100 percent partisan solutions like the Affordable Care Act. 
We should work together to enact honest, patient-centered reforms that 
empower families like Dawn's with choices and custom care options so 
that she can continue to pay for health care and still live within her 
means.
  Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate the gentlewoman yielding to me to 
finish my remarks.
  Section 6 of H.R. 3309 calls for a limit on discovery when we are 
talking about patents. Just so you will know again, one of the results 
of these innocuous things is hard to understand. What it means is that 
if you limit the discovery when someone says, ``I invented this, and I 
am trying to have discovery with a huge corporation to find out how 
they infringed on my patent,'' if you limit that discovery and that 
little guy has to have more motions, it costs a lot more money and, 
thus, the little guys can't afford to bring a suit against the big 
guys.
  So basically what we have got is a list of things in this bill that 
make it extremely more difficult for the little guy to afford to 
support and defend his own patents. And on top of that, then we have 
this attack on patent trolls who are there to try to assist anybody 
that can't afford to enforce his or her own patent. This is a boon to 
the huge corporations, the multinational corporations, and perhaps 
foreign corporations who also get involved in this.
  Let us note that section 7, Small Business Education, Outreach, and 
Information Access, says that the Director of the Patent Office will 
create a database on ``patent trolls,'' thus creating a strategy to 
teach businesses how to defend themselves against patent trolls. You 
know what we have got here? We have got the creation of an enemies 
list. That is what we have here. Justification for people to be put on 
an enemies list if they are out trying to help small inventors enforce 
their patents.
  And finally, let me just note here, section 9, Improvement and 
Technical Corrections to the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, states it 
eliminates section 145 of title 35. Again, this is one of the most 
important things they are trying to slip through this process. This 
would, again--and I am repeating this because it is so important--
eliminates the independent judicial review of patent applications, 
which has been the law of the land since 1836. A huge emasculation, a 
cut in the rights of people who are seeking patents, inventors, 
the creative people in our country. This would eliminate their right--
if the Patent Office is not treating them fairly or has made a 
mistake--for a judicial review that has been a right of the Americans 
since 1836. This is horrendous.

  This bill that is being considered next week by the House Judiciary 
Committee is not reform. It is an antipatent bill consistent with 
decades-long antipatent attacks by multinational corporations who want 
to emasculate America's patent system. And these multinational 
corporations may or may not be headed by Americans, but they are not 
watching out for the interests of our country; and especially, they 
aren't watching out for the innovators and inventors of our country.
  I ask the American people, the patriots, to call their Members of 
Congress and oppose H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act.
  And I would add one last element, as my colleague was just talking 
about the ObamaCare issue that we have been discussing here. One of the 
things that I have found most objectionable about the Affordable Care 
Act, they have a provision in that bill that gives a 2.5 percent tax on 
the gross receipts of anyone who invents a medical device.
  Our inventors have helped increase the standard of living of our 
people, have improved the chances for survival, survival of people's 
families by inventing new technologies that have enabled us to fight 
diseases, that have taken millions of people throughout the history of 
the planet, taken them away in horrible agony. We have our innovators 
and our inventors now creating these new things.
  I have a personal situation where a loved one is suffering from 
cancer, and that loved one has had implanted in her a little--it is a 
portal, they call it. It is under the skin, and it permits this person 
to have chemotherapy and blood transfusions without having to go 
through the vessels, the blood vessels.

[[Page H7108]]

This invention has saved this person's life, because 20 years ago, that 
young girl would probably have had collapsed blood vessels or died of 
some type of situation from infection from putting the needles in one's 
arm. This is what happened 20 years ago and why the survival rate now 
of such cancer patients has gone up.
  I feel like hugging the person who invented that device. That person 
deserves our love and gratitude. This administration has seen fit to 
punish this person for this creativity and this innovation.
  This administration put a 2.5 percent tax not on the net, not after 
all the expenses that this inventor went through to invent this, all 
the expenses to go into producing it, all the expenses that go into 
distributing it, making sure people knew how to use this new device. 
No, no. This is a 2.5 percent tax on the gross income. It is a 
horrendous penalty on the person who has saved the lives of all these 
people. That is what this Affordable Care Act is all about. That is 
what ObamaCare is all about.
  In some misguided idea that we are going to redistribute the wealth 
and take care of everybody through government, we are now doing things 
that are of great harm to the people in this country, not just to the 
infrastructure, the financial infrastructure of our health care which 
is collapsing under the incompetence of this law that is foisted upon 
them with lies, no, but also we are now facing a situation where the 
very heart and soul of human progress, medical technology, is being 
punished through this law.
  I join with my colleagues and say that this is something we should 
all join together, repeal, and start again and try to do a better job 
next time.
  Ms. FOXX. I thank my colleague for his comments and yield back the 
balance of my time.

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