[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 130 (Tuesday, August 1, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S4635]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Healthcare

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the American people are looking to 
Congress to turn the page on healthcare and start working on bipartisan 
improvements to our healthcare system. Stabilizing the individual 
market is the first thing we should all focus on. The repeated attempts 
to repeal and replace the healthcare law, as well as the 
administration's threat to stop making the cost-sharing payments that 
help keep premiums down and keep markets stable, have injected massive 
uncertainty into the system.
  Insurers hate nothing more than uncertainty. It drives them to jack 
up the costs of premiums and to pull out of markets. Already, insurers 
in three States have issued two separate sets of proposed rates for 
2018--one if the administration makes the cost-sharing payments and one 
if it does not. The set of proposed rates if the payments are not made 
is 20 percent higher in all three States. I don't know the third, but 
two of them are North Carolina and Pennsylvania, which are very 
significant States. In Idaho, the State insurance commissioner said 
that rates on the most popular plans would be 50 percent higher next 
year because of ``the potential refusal by the Federal Government to 
fund the cost share reduction mechanism.'' That comes from the State 
insurance commissioner. I do not know if that is an elected position, 
but whether it is elected or appointed, my guess is that he is a 
Republican. They do not elect too many Democrats out there.
  The administration is supposed to announce today or sometime this 
week its decision on whether to make the next set of payments. The ball 
is in the President's court. He can make the payments as the law 
requires and needs or he can sabotage our healthcare system and impose 
a Trump premium tax of 20 percent higher premiums on the American 
people next year by not extending the cost-sharing program.
  Why would he do this? Why would he raise people's rates? His only 
stated reason is petty, is childish, is un-Presidential. He will get 
back at people because his hope to repeal and replace was rejected. You 
do not hurt innocent people when you lose politically. That is not 
Presidential. That is not, frankly, what an adult does. The ball is in 
the President's court, as I said, and let's hope he does the right 
thing.
  President Trump has already made it harder for Americans to afford 
insurance next year by publicly rooting for our Nation's healthcare 
system to collapse, injecting a baseline of uncertainty into the 
system. President Trump would make things a whole lot worse by not 
making the next set of payments--20 percent higher premiums, more bare 
counties, even more market instability.
  The American people need a President who puts their interests first, 
not someone who plays political games with their healthcare. The 
American people can ill afford a Trump premium tax this year, and it is 
completely avoidable. All the President has to do is to make the 
payments and carry out the law as he is supposed to. Afterward, 
Congress should move to guarantee these payments permanently or at 
least for a significant period of time.
  This uncertainty caused by the President's threats has been the most 
destabilizing factor in the individual market. That is not according to 
Chuck Schumer or any Democrat; it is according to the insurers' largest 
trade group, AHIP. The President has proved that he cannot be trusted 
to faithfully execute the procedures that keep our healthcare system on 
track.
  The only good news here is that there are moves by people on both 
sides of the aisle in this Senate to take some of this uncertainty off 
the table by guaranteeing these payments in the future.
  My good friends, the chairman of the HELP Committee, the senior 
Senator from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander, and the ranking Democratic 
member, Senator Patty Murray, have an ability to work together on many 
issues. I know they are meeting almost as we speak--in 5 minutes--to 
discuss how we can move forward. I spoke to Senator Alexander in the 
gym, where the Presiding Officer, I want to tell his constituents, was 
exercising and staying fit, too, and he seemed very eager to try to 
work together to stabilize the system.