[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.
____________________