[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 106 (Wednesday, June 21, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3690-S3695]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HEALTHCARE LEGISLATION
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, since the first day of this
administration, I have heard from women in my home State and nationwide
who are fearful of what President Trump will do to their health and
rights--from appointing a Supreme Court Justice who has made clear that
he opposes the historic ruling in Roe v. Wade, to trying at every turn
to undermine women's access to safe, legal abortion here in the United
States and abroad, to proposing a budget that would defund Planned
Parenthood and devastate investments in women's health. I know from
letters, calls, emails, tweets, rallies--you name it--that across the
country women feel under attack because of this administration's
policies and the willingness of Republicans in Congress to make sure
they are carried out.
Women are worried and, unfortunately, they have a right to be,
especially in this moment. In a matter of
[[Page S3691]]
days, Senate Republicans could bring their version of TrumpCare to this
floor. As many of us have said, this is the worst bill for women in a
generation. It will cut off access to critical healthcare services at
Planned Parenthood, our Nation's largest provider of women's
healthcare. It will allow our insurance companies to go back to
charging women more and interfere with women's constitutionally
protected reproductive rights. In fact, at literally every stage of
life, TrumpCare would stand in the way of women's access to the
healthcare they need.
Under this bill, young girls nationwide would lose Medicaid coverage.
College students across the country who go to Planned Parenthood for
contraception would find the centers they rely on shuttered. Women
would pay $1,000 more a month for maternity care, and women battling
cancer and women who are survivors would have to look ahead to being
discriminated against for having a preexisting condition. Senior women
would watch their premiums spike by as much as 850 percent because of
the age tax Republicans have inexplicitly chosen to include in this
bill.
I could go on, but let me just say that since President Trump and
Republicans first began trying to jam this bill through, I have heard
from countless women who would be impacted by the cruel policies I have
just described.
One of them is Kelly. Her son has a developmental disability and he
gets Medicaid coverage. There is Jennifer, who is fighting cancer tooth
and nail and is now worrying about what is going to happen if the
Medicaid expansion goes away. There is Tammy, whose congenital heart
disease made pregnancy life threatening and who was able to afford safe
and effective contraception because of her insurance coverage. Those
are just a few examples. I am so grateful to them and to the many, many
others who have spoken out and shared their stories.
We might think that with so many women thinking about how this bill
would impact them, with so much at stake for women's health, rights,
and financial security should TrumpCare be signed into law, Senate
Republicans would want to see what women thought of their version of
TrumpCare. But they have made it abundantly and offensively clear that
they do not.
They put together a working group of 13 men to draft their version.
They negotiated in secret. They wrote this bill in back rooms. Now
Senate Republicans are keeping it under lock and key until the very
last minute so that women have as little time as possible to see just
how badly this bill could harm them and their families. Women aren't
going to put up with that, and Democrats aren't either.
I am proud to be here this evening with a number of my Democratic
colleagues to call on Senate Republicans to stop hiding their bill from
women and bring it out in the light for the scrutiny it deserves.
My Republican colleagues are right, I think, to be ashamed of this
version of TrumpCare. But that doesn't mean it should be hidden from
view, and we are not going to stop until women across the country get
to read the fine print, instead of taking 13 male Republican Senators'
word for it.
While this is a truly difficult and frightening time for anyone who
believes that women should be able to make their own decisions about
their own healthcare and who think politicians should not be able to
interfere with those decisions, I have also been truly inspired by the
response I have seen to the extreme agenda President Trump and
Republicans are pursuing.
Since the first days of this administration, when I was so proud to
march with millions of women across this country and the world to stand
up for women's health and women's rights, women have continued to lead
the fight against this administration's constant efforts to take our
country backward. That is exactly what TrumpCare would do.
So let me be very clear. If Senate Republicans continue down this
path, if they choose to jam a secret bill through Congress and get it
signed into law instead of listening to people in this country and to
us and working with us on real solutions to fix our healthcare system,
you can be sure that women across the country--who will be forced to
pay more for their care or lose it altogether--are going to be ready to
make sure Republicans own every ounce of the harm they cause.
So I am here tonight to urge Republicans to make the right choice,
and I will join women across the country in holding them fully
accountable if they don't.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The Senator from Hawaii.
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President I join my colleagues, Senator Murray and
others, and I thank Senator Murray for her leadership on this important
issue.
Right now, 13 of our male colleagues are sequestered away somewhere,
plotting--and I use that word, and that is an accurate word because
that is what it feels like to those of us who are shut out of the
process of putting together the Senate bill. These 13 men are plotting
how to deprive millions of women across our country access to essential
healthcare--women all over our country. That is half of our population.
Frankly, it is sad that we are having this debate about the need for
openness and transparency that impacts half of our population and that
is one-sixth of our economy.
Sadly, it isn't surprising. Republicans in Congress have fought to
deny women access to healthcare for decades. Now they have a willing
and complicit ally in this crusade--Donald Trump. In their zeal to
repeal the Affordable Care Act, the President and his allies in
Congress don't appear to be concerned about the collateral damage they
leave behind.
For women, this means facing a return to a time when our gender--our
very gender--was considered a preexisting condition. Before the
Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could discriminate against
women of child-bearing age. They could charge outrageous rates for
birth control and contraceptives. Under the ACA, women have secure
access to care before, during, and after their pregnancies. They can no
longer be charged outrageous rates simply for having a child or be
denied access to mental health services if they suffer from postpartum
depression. Women can now receive free contraceptive care, like birth
control pills and IUDs. But now the President and Republicans in
Congress are determined to drag us backward, all in the name of giving
the richest Americans a huge tax cut.
Let's be really clear on this. The poorest, oldest, and the most sick
people in our country are going to suffer so that the richest people in
our country can get a huge tax cut under this bill. We need to do
everything we can to fight against all these misguided efforts.
Although we haven't seen the likely monstrosity currently being
hatched in secret, we have a pretty good idea of what is going to be in
this bill. In the House version of TrumpCare, States have the ability
to opt out of the Affordable Care Act's essential health benefits,
which include access to birth control, pregnancy, and mental health
coverage.
One Republican Congressman even had the audacity to say he shouldn't
have to subsidize pregnancy care because he can't get pregnant. How the
heck do you think he even arrived on this Earth? I really think this is
outrageous. This is an outrageous statement that speaks for itself.
The bill also makes good on a longstanding Republican promise to
defund Planned Parenthood, regardless of the cost in lives. Over the
past few years, Republicans in Congress have tried everything they
could think of to defund Planned Parenthood--passing stand-alone bills,
attaching poison pills to must-pass bills, threatening a government
shutdown, and passing TrumpCare in the House. In March, the majority
leader held the floor open for over an hour to allow the Vice President
time to travel to the Capitol to break a tie to repeal a regulation on
title X funding meant to preserve access to Federal family planning
services.
I understand that many of my friends on the other side of the aisle
have strong feelings about abortion, but I have never been able to
understand how this translates into attacking an organization that uses
no Federal funds to provide abortions. In fact, Planned Parenthood uses
its Federal funding to provide low-cost healthcare to the people in our
country who need it most but who can't afford it.
In 2014 alone, Planned Parenthood provided over 600,000 cancer
screenings
[[Page S3692]]
and over 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted
infections. These are real facts, not alternative facts.
I have heard from hundreds of my constituents over the past 6 months
about how important Planned Parenthood is to them, and I would like to
share a few of their stories.
Tiffany from Honolulu made her first visit to Planned Parenthood when
she was 21, under unexpected circumstances during a pregnancy scare.
She felt that having a child at that time in her life would be
extremely difficult and would have negatively impacted her ability to
finish school. During her visit to the clinic, Tiffany took a pregnancy
test and discovered she wasn't pregnant. Her caregivers were then able
to counsel Tiffany about her sexual health without judgment. They
walked her through the different options she had and administered an
STD test. She left the clinic with a prescription for birth control.
Kim, a young attorney from my State, recently wrote to my office to
tell her story about turning to Planned Parenthood when she faced an
unexpected pregnancy. After having a safe and open conversation with
the staff at her local Planned Parenthood, Kim decided she was not
ready to have a baby and ended her pregnancy. Planned Parenthood gave
her the space and opportunity to make the best decision for her. As she
recounted to us, ``You don't have to like someone's choice, but you
don't get to take away their freedom to make it.''
The fight against TrumpCare continues, but I am going to do
everything I can to protect women's health and their right to control
their bodies--to control our bodies.
I urge my colleagues to oppose any measure in TrumpCare that takes
women back to the days when our very gender was considered a
preexisting condition.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Hawaii for her
words and Senator Murray for organizing this group of speakers.
I rise today to join my colleagues in making clear that TrumpCare
would be a disaster for women in New Hampshire and across the Nation.
Right now Senate Republicans continue to meet behind closed doors on
their TrumpCare bill, and the reason they have not been transparent is
because they know they can't defend this dangerous bill to their
constituents. Throughout the process in the Senate, it has been a group
of 13 men--no women--writing a bill that will impact the healthcare of
millions of American women. It is not just that a small group has been
writing the bill behind closed doors. It is also that once we do
eventually see the bill, it is going to be rushed to the floor without
a hearing. So we will not have the benefit of feedback from our
constituents, from stakeholders, from people who understand what the
impact of this bill will be. This is simply unacceptable.
To compete economically on a level playing field, women must be able
to make their own healthcare decisions. They shouldn't have to pay more
than men do for their healthcare. They should be able to visit
providers of their own choice who understand and have expertise in
women's healthcare needs. The health insurance that is available to
women should be equal to that of their male colleagues. That means it
should cover their basic healthcare needs.
To fully participate not only in our economy but also in our
democracy, women have to be recognized for their capacity to make their
own healthcare decisions--just as men are.
I have heard from many constituents whose lives have been changed by
being able to get the healthcare they need from the providers they
trust. One of those people is Carla from Newfields, NH. As a college
student, Carla suffered from significant pain. She needed immediate
medical care, so she went to her local Planned Parenthood.
It turned out that her pain was caused by ovarian cysts, and the
treatment for those cysts was birth control. As a college student on a
limited budget, before the Affordable Care Act had passed, Carla
couldn't afford birth control. Because she went to Planned Parenthood,
though, she got the treatment she needed at a price she could afford.
Her pain went away. She was able to graduate college and eventually
start a family--something she might not have been able to do if her
underlying condition had not been treated, caught when it was. That was
the power of access to appropriate and affordable health care in her
life at the right time.
Carla's story is the story of the thousands of New Hampshire women
who received primary and preventive healthcare services from Planned
Parenthood.
TrumpCare is a disaster for women. TrumpCare defunds Planned
Parenthood, which would take away a critical source of care for women.
This care includes birth control and breast and cervical cancer
screenings. Defunding Planned Parenthood would leave many women in the
Granite State and throughout the country without access to care, plain
and simple. There aren't enough other providers, as I heard from
medical providers throughout my State when I was Governor there, to
absorb all of the patients Planned Parenthood cares for now.
TrumpCare also includes harmful language that restricts women's
constitutionally protected rights to access abortion services.
Additionally, under TrumpCare, if you are a mother, giving birth could
now be considered a preexisting condition that insurance companies
could use to discriminate against you and charge you more.
TrumpCare would increase the cost to women from maternity care in two
ways:
First, it would undermine the requirement that insurance companies
must cover essential health benefits, including maternity care. In
fact, the Congressional Budget Office says that the House-passed
TrumpCare bill would increase out-of-pocket spending for maternity care
for women who have private insurance by thousands of dollars per year.
Second, TrumpCare slashes Medicaid funding. Medicaid pays for nearly
one-half of all births in the United States, meaning, with the 25-
percent cut in expenditures over the next decade that is called for in
the TrumpCare bill, that at least some of this maternity coverage would
also be cut.
Any cut to Medicaid would disproportionately affect Granite State
women, as 62 percent of Medicaid recipients in New Hampshire are women.
These cuts would also strain at-risk families because Medicaid covers
nearly one in three children across our country and nearly 30 percent
of the children in my State of New Hampshire.
It is clear that TrumpCare would continue efforts to play partisan
games with a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions and
control her own destiny.
It is critical that people in New Hampshire and across our Nation
continue to speak out and share their stories about how TrumpCare would
impact their lives, and I am going to continue to work with my
colleagues to defeat this bill.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am very pleased to follow my colleague
from New Hampshire, Senator Hassan. She said it very well. This is an
extraordinarily important part of the debate.
A Senate vote on TrumpCare is now days away, and that is the case
even though the bill remains hidden in the Senate shadows. I am here
tonight with my colleagues to try to shine some light on the
extraordinary harm TrumpCare is going to do to women's health across
the country and also to call on the American people to stand up and
say, and say loudly, that this is wrong--wrong because it would be a
partisan process that takes away important healthcare rights from women
across this country.
First, TrumpCare says that health insurance in America ought to be
based on what men need and what women need ought to cost extra. You
look back a few years to when the Affordable Care Act set in stone
guaranteed insurance benefits to protect everybody who shops on the
open market, the private open market, regardless of their gender, no
price gouging women just because they are women. Now, however, the
Republican plan lets States hack away at those essential
[[Page S3693]]
health benefits, and it always seems that maternity care is the first
benefit that then gets cut.
If TrumpCare goes through, what will happen in America is insurance
companies will carve maternity care out of the plans they offer on the
open market. It would, in effect, become an add-on--an add-on that
would come with a higher price, as if a pregnant women's healthcare is
a luxury item like a sunroof on a new car.
Let's set aside the fact that every man in the country was born to a
woman. My colleagues on the other side have spent 7 years telling
Americans that they were laser-focused on bringing costs down for
everybody. Apparently, that notion of ``everybody'' that we are hearing
from Republican Senators doesn't include mothers because their costs
are going to be going up in a number of instances.
Second, the public has heard time and time again that nobody would be
hurt under TrumpCare and that repeal and replace is all about putting
the patient at the center of care. Tell that to the hundreds of
thousands of women who will lose their right to see the doctor of their
choosing as a result of TrumpCare defunding Planned Parenthood. Just
unpack that for a moment. I think one basic, almost sacred principle
for women is that they ought to be able to make the choice of the
physician they trust for their healthcare. Yet what we are talking
about here--apparently tomorrow--is a real prospect that women will
lose the right to see the doctor they trust.
This ideological campaign against Planned Parenthood ignores the fact
that there are already laws on the books that prevent tax dollars from
funding abortions. It ignores the fact that Planned Parenthood doesn't
get a dime of taxpayer funding above what is available to other
comparable healthcare providers. It ignores the fact that women rely on
Planned Parenthood to get routine medical care from the doctors they
know and trust--basic checkups, cancer screenings, preventive care, HIV
tests.
It is long past time to end this crusade against Planned Parenthood,
which is taking away from women in this country the ability to make
their own judgments about whom they want to see and the doctors they
trust.
Finally, the TrumpCare plan would significantly slash Medicaid, and
this is a special threat to women. Medicaid is at the heart of women's
healthcare in the country. Women live longer than men on average, and
Medicaid helps pay for two out of three seniors living in nursing
homes. Women are more likely than men to have a disability, and
Medicaid is the key to helping millions of Americans with disabilities
live successful, independent lives in their communities. The Republican
healthcare plan would slash Medicaid so deeply year after year that
States would be forced to cut benefits and access to care. Women would
be hit the hardest by those cuts.
The public needs to know that right now, it is go time in America on
healthcare. This vote is right around the corner. And because my
colleagues on the other side have in effect locked into this ``our way
or the highway'' approach--the Washington word for it is
``reconciliation,'' and my guess is that in a lot of coffee shops in
North Carolina and Oregon and points in between, people aren't that up
on Washington lingo like reconciliation, but they really want Democrats
and Republicans to work together. That has been the cornerstone of my
work with respect to healthcare. That is what Chairman Hatch and I have
done with respect to the transformation of Medicare, to update the
Medicare guarantee. I have worked with my colleagues in a bipartisan
way in terms of independence at home, more care for older people at
home, and on a host of issues, particularly with respect to holding
down pharmaceutical costs in a bipartisan way. The reality is, that is
the only way you come up with approaches that are sustainable--build on
principles that both sides feel strongly about and lock it into a
bipartisan agreement.
What we are looking at, again, not in 6 weeks but tomorrow, is the
Senate Republicans saying: We are going to use this reconciliation--not
the bipartisan approaches that I think yield the real dividends but a
partisan approach. It is called reconciliation. It means ``It is our
way or the highway.'' And then what you are going to do is you are
going to have one of the most consequential debates about domestic
policy in decades. It is going to fly through the Senate with hardly
any public input and debate.
A big part of what I wanted to do tonight is come to the floor of the
Senate to say to Americans that this is the time to get loud, to get
very loud and to tell your friends and your neighbors and your
relatives to get out there and be loud with you. This isn't some
mundane debate where the two sides couldn't square their differences,
the kind most people choose to ignore; this is an out-and-out attack on
the healthcare of millions of Americans and especially women.
I think that when the facts get out to women in this country, they
are going to say this is wrong, and they are going to say this is
personal. The people in Washington, DC, talk about lots of things and
throw around lots of Washington lingo like ``reconciliation,'' but I
think they are going to see through exactly what these proposals mean
for them. It is a significant rollback of their rights on matters like
being able to choose the doctor they trust.
I will close with this, and I have felt this way since the days when
I was co-director of the senior citizens at home in Oregon. Political
change hardly ever is top-down--top being it comes from government
buildings and then trickles down to people--it is almost always
bottoms-up, where the voices of Americans are heard and they tell their
elected officials when they are off base, when they are doing something
that will hurt them rather than help them.
I close by way of saying that I hope this has provided at least some
useful information so Americans--particularly women--can get engaged,
get loud, and do it now.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I note my colleague is prepared to speak.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am proud and honored to follow my
colleague from Oregon who has been such a steadfast leader when it
comes to our Nation's healthcare and insurance and particularly when it
comes to women's healthcare. I have been really proud to stand side by
side with him, Senator Murray, and other colleagues who have been here
today.
I must say, sometimes on the floor of the Senate, at this hour of the
day or night, we can feel alone, as though no one is listening, but I
know millions of Americans are listening because of the voices like my
colleague Senator Wyden. I would join him in urging our fellow
Americans to make their voices heard, to be loud, and we are going to
be loud in Connecticut this Friday, at 1:30 in the afternoon, when I
continue the emergency field hearing we began on Monday, giving the
people of Connecticut an opportunity to make their voices and their
faces known, seen, and heard because, unfortunately, that opportunity
has been denied by a process that has been secretive and hasty. Secrecy
and speed are a toxic recipe for any democracy. They can disguise
deception and mistakes.
I am here to call attention to one of the profoundly mistaken courses
that this new bill is expected to take. There is no doubt in my mind
that the Republican bill will contain language to defund one of the
most respected and accessible and significant of our healthcare
providers in the United States; namely, Planned Parenthood.
I have been an advocate of women's healthcare and reproductive rights
and choice since my days as a law clerk for Justice Blackmun in the
1970s. Our Nation has made progress--halting and sometimes it steps
back--but Planned Parenthood has helped to improve, enduringly and
profoundly, women's healthcare.
In my home State of Connecticut, Planned Parenthood has 17 sites and
services for more than 60,000 women and men, and they have been covered
by the Medicaid Program. That coverage will be decimated under the
measure we expect to see. Defunding these clinics could do irreparable
damage to the communities that Planned Parenthood clinics serve.
As a nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood in Southern Connecticut
told me, patients trust the services they receive at Planned Parenthood
because they rely on them, and they know Planned Parenthood clinics
have
[[Page S3694]]
one interest and only one interest in mind, which is the well-being of
their patients and clients. Planned Parenthood has, therefore, expanded
into primary care. Not only does Amina provide family planning services
and STI and cancer screenings, she now screens for and treats patients
for chronic medical conditions that disproportionately impact low-
income patients, such as depression, diabetes, asthma, and
hypertension.
In her clinic, my friend who is a nurse practitioner there, Amina,
has seen her primary care practice grow from 8 patients initially to
112 a few months later. Her clinic offers these services, in addition
to the contraceptive services that are so important to many patients.
Patients who will simply go unseen and uncared for have this care at
Planned Parenthood, but they will not have it if Planned Parenthood is
defunded.
In Connecticut, other kinds of healthcare providers, like health
centers and hospitals, would need to increase their capacity to provide
contraceptive care, and they would have to increase it by 228 percent
to overcome the care deficit left by defunding Planned Parenthood. With
these craven attempts to immediately and completely defund Planned
Parenthood as a part of TrumpCare--really TrumpCare 2.0--it will be
even more challenging for so many women to get the healthcare they need
and deserve.
Defunding of Planned Parenthood also jeopardizes gains our Nation
made for women of color and patients who are served in areas where
there are few, if any, other options.
Planned Parenthood centers and clinics are nothing short of a
lifeline for quality healthcare in the underserved communities. The
fact is, the Affordable Care Act has worked for women and particularly
women of color. Planned Parenthood and other women's healthcare
providers are an integral part of that success story, but it isn't only
women of color, it isn't only women in underserved communities, and it
isn't only women. It is families who have benefited--men, women, and
children--because the quality of healthcare and preventive healthcare,
particularly, has been raised immeasurably.
To decimate that network of care would be profoundly destructive to
our Nation. I hope my colleagues will think again before they side with
the forces of degrading and demeaning women who seek those protections.
We need a national effort and appreciation to make sure our conscience
prevails because the repeal of these provisions would mean they are
gone, and all women--including healthy women--will see insurance costs
rise. It is absolutely clear to me that the Affordable Care Act repeal
would be cruel. It would be mean and most particularly to the women who
depend on Planned Parenthood for so many of the services that help them
and their families.
I hope my Republican colleagues will cease to ignore and deny these
benefits. We stand ready to work with them to improve the Affordable
Care Act, not to repeal it, not to decimate or destroy it, to improve
it, to mend its defects, to preserve Planned Parenthood, to make sure
the women of America and their families have the healthcare they need
and deserve.
Thank you. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am joining my colleagues on the floor
this afternoon because I share their concerns about what will happen to
women's healthcare. I am concerned about what will happen to everyone's
healthcare, but particularly this afternoon we are talking about our
concerns with respect to healthcare for women.
If the Senate passes legislation like the House passed recently--the
American Health Care Act--that legislation has been widely described as
cruel and poorly crafted. Just last week, President Trump described it
simply as mean. Republican leaders in the Senate are now writing a
companion bill that reportedly makes mostly cosmetic changes to the
House bill. By some accounts, it would make the House bill even more
extreme.
Obviously, any legislation that, by design, takes health insurance
away from tens of millions of Americans, I believe, is deeply
misguided. I am particularly concerned about the harmful effects this
legislation would have on women's health. Indeed, I received countless
emails and letters from women who are offended that, once again,
powerful men are meeting behind closed doors to make critical decisions
regarding women's health, and we have been excluded from the room.
This Republican bill would take us back to the days before the
Affordable Care Act, when insurers could charge women more just for
being women, with no other reason needed. It would take away the
Federal protections against discrimination based on preexisting
conditions. Bear in mind, some of these conditions apply mostly or
exclusively to women.
In the days before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies
treated pregnancies, sexual assault, domestic violence, and cesarean
sections as preexisting conditions. Insurers routinely charged higher
premiums to women with these ``preexisting conditions'' or they denied
coverage all together. For example, more than 30 percent of mothers
have a cesarean section. Once again, if this House-passed bill passes,
and if we see something out of the Senate that does the same, women
would face discrimination, mothers would face discrimination from
insurance companies.
The American Health Care Act would also harm women by allowing
insurers to opt out of the 10 essential health benefits that all
insurance plans must cover under the Affordable Care Act. These
benefits are called essential because that is exactly what they are.
They are essential, not only to good health but, in some cases, to
actually staying alive. A number of these essential health benefits
apply exclusively to women, including contraception, maternity and
newborn care, mammograms, and cervical cancer screenings.
Several months ago on Facebook, I asked people across New Hampshire
to tell me their stories--stories about how the Affordable Care Act has
made lifesaving difference or otherwise improved their lives. I heard
from many women across New Hampshire who have written about how the
Affordable Care Act has ended discrimination against them by the health
insurance industry because of their gender. In particular, they are
grateful that the Affordable Care Act includes maternity care and
contraception.
This is a picture of Maura Fay, of Exeter, NH. She writes:
My husband and I are self-employed. Before the ACA we were
paying rates that were simply unsustainable for a middle-
class family like ours. When I was pregnant in 2013, we were
forced to pay a maternity rider of an additional $822 a
month.
That is in addition to her premium. She says:
I'm worried about the rollbacks in regulations around
Essential Health Benefits, especially since so many of them
impact women. Maternity coverage shouldn't come with an
additional $800 a month price tag.
Well, I appreciate that letter from Maura, but I am worried she may
actually be underestimating the cost of maternity care coverage if the
Affordable Care Act is repealed. According to one analysis, women who
seek maternity care under the American Health Care Act--the legislation
passed by the House--could pay up to $17,000 in surcharges to their
insurance company.
The American Health Care Act that the House passed also makes
draconian cuts to Medicaid, and this will disproportionately harm
women--nearly 40 million women--who make up the majority of Medicaid
beneficiaries. Medicaid provides healthcare for nearly half of all
pregnant women in the United States, supporting them through their
pregnancies and ensuring that their babies get a healthy start in life.
This coverage is directly threatened by the Republican legislation.
The American Health Care Act the House passed, if we combine that
with the administration's budget proposal, it would cut Medicaid by a
staggering $1.4 trillion by the year 2027--so, in 10 years, a $1.4
trillion cut. This would reduce Medicaid funding by nearly half and
mean that tens of millions of people would lose coverage, including
many women of reproductive age.
Let me also point out that both the American Health Care Act passed
by the House and the President's budget terminate all Federal funding
for Planned Parenthood, and we just heard Senator Blumenthal speak
eloquently about the importance of Planned Parenthood. This would leave
millions of
[[Page S3695]]
women and families with fewer healthcare options. In New Hampshire, it
would mean that between 12,000 and 13,000 women and men would lose
access to basic primary and preventive health services, including
lifesaving cancer screenings and HIV testing.
According to poll after poll, the American people all across the
political spectrum strongly support Planned Parenthood and oppose
efforts to defund it. Despite efforts by Republican leaders in the
House and Senate to misrepresent the facts, Planned Parenthood does not
use taxpayer dollars to fund abortions. Indeed, Federal law expressly
forbids the use of Federal funds to pay for abortions except under
extremely narrow circumstances that have been agreed to by Congress, so
the real issue here is not abortion. This is about ensuring that
American women have access to the basic healthcare they need where they
want to receive it. Remember that Planned Parenthood plays an
especially important role in delivering essential health services to
low-income, uninsured, and vulnerable individuals, including in rural
areas.
Earlier this year I received a letter from Samantha Fox of Bow, NH,
and she writes:
In 2007, I was a 19-year-old just barely starting out when
I was denied health insurance due to a preexisting condition.
Had I been able to access affordable coverage, my preexisting
condition, a reproductive system disorder, would have been
easily manageable. . . . [A]t that time, I was able to access
care through Planned Parenthood which likely preserved my
ability to conceive in the future. Flash forward 10 years: I
am expecting my first child and I have coverage which, thanks
to the Affordable Care Act, includes prenatal care.
Now, here in Washington, some people think that repealing the
Affordable Care Act is all about politics and notching a win on their
scoreboard. But for ordinary people in New Hampshire and across the
country, including millions of women, repealing the Affordable Care Act
isn't about politics, it is about life and death. We need to listen to
the women and men in each of our States whose lives and finances would
be turned upside down if the Affordable Care Act is repealed.
Furthermore, it is just wrong to exclude women, to exclude their
colleagues, to exclude Democrats, to exclude the public and to pursue a
strictly partisan approach to healthcare--the same approach that
produced a terrible bill in the House. And it is deeply misguided to
bring legislation to the floor that we all know would hurt tens of
millions of Americans and do particular harm to women.
There is a better way forward in the Senate. Let's put ideology and
partisanship aside. Let's work together. Let's strengthen the elements
of the Affordable Care Act that are working in the real world,
including Medicaid expansion, and let's fix what is not working. It
doesn't matter what we call this. It doesn't have to be called
ObamaCare. We can call it whatever we want. The important thing is to
have legislation that would provide access to healthcare for Americans,
healthcare they can afford, that is quality, that is there when people
need it. This is what the great majority of the American people want us
to do. It is time now to respect their wishes. Let's strengthen the
Affordable Care Act so that it works even better for all Americans.
I yield the floor.
____________________