[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 149 (Thursday, September 14, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5727-S5728]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               HEALTHCARE

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the most important words in our 
Constitution are the first three words: ``We the People.'' That is the 
mission statement for the United States of America. It is written in 
big, bold, beautiful letters so that even from across the room, if you 
can't read the details, you know what our Nation is all about. As 
President Lincoln summarized, a Nation ``of the people, by the people, 
for the people.''
  What we have seen this year is quite an assault on this vision of 
government of, by, and for the people. It came in the form of President 
Trump's plan to rip healthcare from millions of Americans in order to 
deliver billions of dollars to the very richest among us--plan after 
plan, version after version, wiping out healthcare for 24 million, 
wiping out healthcare for 23 million, wiping out healthcare for 32 
million, and so on and so forth, always over 20 million, and always 
delivering this enormous gift of hundreds of billions of dollars to the 
richest Americans.
  You look at this from a little bit of distance, and it is just 
incredible to imagine that this could have occurred--that any member, a 
single member of our Nation would possibly

[[Page S5728]]

have supported such an outrageous, diabolical, dangerous, damaging plan 
to the quality of life for so many people across our Nation.
  It wasn't just that it ripped healthcare from more than 20 million 
people. It wasn't just that it delivered billions of dollars to the 
wealthiest among us. It also ensured that those with preexisting 
conditions wouldn't be able to get care. It was also that it would have 
raised our premiums an estimated 20 percent for those who were able to 
secure insurance.
  If one set out to design the worst possible healthcare plan you could 
ever imagine, you probably couldn't come up with one as bad as 
President Trump and the Republican team came up with. It seems 
incredible that we are still debating the basic premise of whether 
healthcare should be part of a standard foundation for families to 
thrive here in this century. Every other developed nation understands 
that healthcare is so essential to quality of life, so essential for 
our children to thrive, so essential for our families to succeed that 
they make sure that, just by virtue of living in a country, you have 
that healthcare.
  Well, I have to salute the millions of Americans who weighed in to 
say that this diabolical plan needed to be dumped. They filled our 
streets and overflowed our inboxes and flooded our phones. They made it 
perfectly clear that healthcare is a basic human right, not a privilege 
reserved for the healthy and the wealthy. I certainly agree with them. 
We decided collectively that we were not going to allow this diabolical 
plan to undo the progress we made. We made significant progress with 
ObamaCare. After decades of being essentially unable to change the 
uninsured rate, we made significant progress. There we are with a big 
drop in the uninsured rate--a big increase in the number of people who 
have access to healthcare. But we are not in that place yet where this 
number drops to zero. We still have 10 percent of our country that 
doesn't have insurance. The costs are still too high, and the 
deductibles and copays are too high. One out of five Americans can 
still not afford their prescriptions.
  In addition, we have this incredibly complicated set of healthcare 
systems. We have Medicare and Medicaid. We have on-exchange, and we 
have off-exchange. We have the Children's Health Insurance Program. We 
have workers' compensation. We have self-insurance. We have a multitude 
of varieties of healthcare through the workplace--some covering just 
the individual, others covering the entire family, some covering just a 
small percent of the healthcare costs and some more. Some are certainly 
so complicated that even the folks who have them aren't sure what the 
insurance company should pay.
  So we found in this conversation with Americans about healthcare that 
Americans weighed in very strongly about the stresses and the 
challenges of ordinary Americans to secure healthcare. It is an ongoing 
lifelong effort. Do you have an employer who covers you but not your 
children? Can you get them on the Children's Health Insurance Program? 
Do you have an insurance plan at work that you have to contribute to, 
but the costs of contributing are so high that you really can't afford 
it? Do you opt out of that? Then, what happens? Or perhaps you are 
under Medicaid--up to 138 percent of the poverty level for those States 
that have expanded Medicaid--and you gain a small increase in your pay 
and maybe now you don't qualify. In the middle of the year, can you 
apply to the healthcare exchange? Will you get tax credits credited to 
you or will you have to pay a big sum at the end of the year when your 
taxes are reconciled? It is continuous applications, continuous change, 
and continuous stress. Why do we make it that hard?
  In my 36 town halls a year--one in every county in Oregon, mostly in 
red counties because most of the counties in Oregon are red counties--I 
have had people coming out yearning for a simple, seamless system that 
says: Just by virtue of being an American, you have healthcare when you 
need it and you will not end up bankrupt. What is that vision all 
about? It is about taking an existing model, one that has worked so 
well for our seniors--the model of Medicare.
  Folks used to come to my town halls and they would say: I am just 
trying to stay alive until I reach age 65 so that I can be part of that 
wonderful healthcare plan--that Medicare plan. So this is a well-known 
commodity. I have heard some of my colleagues mocking it in the last 
few days. Well, certainly, maybe they should get out and have town 
halls. Maybe they should talk to our seniors about how well this system 
works. Maybe they should recognize that the overhead costs are much 
lower--2 percent versus 20 percent, and sometimes much more in private 
insurance healthcare. That is more than a fifth of our healthcare 
dollars simply wasted--a waste that disappears with Medicare for All.
  This is the type of healthcare system that addresses and changes this 
enormous, fractured, and stressful system. We currently spend twice as 
much as other developed nations per person on healthcare--twice as much 
as France, twice as much as Canada, twice as much as Germany, and the 
list goes on. Yet the healthcare we receive provides less health in 
America than in those countries.
  We should be ashamed that our infant mortality rates are higher, even 
though we spend twice as many dollars per capita as those other 
countries. So it is clear that there is significant room for 
improvement. By the way, there are so many opportunities to move in 
this direction.
  We laid out this Medicare for All plan, and I salute my colleague 
Bernie Sanders and my additional cosponsors. There are now 17 Senators 
who have said: We are cosponsors to this because we know that it 
addresses the fractured, stressful nature of our system. We know it is 
more cost-effective than our current system. We know that it will lead 
to greater peace of mind than our current system.
  Shouldn't peace of mind be what we are all about? That is the peace 
of mind that if your loved one gets ill or injured, they will get the 
care they need. The peace of mind that if your loved one is in an 
accident, they will get the care they need and you will not end up 
bankrupt.
  It is time for America to have this conversation, and it is my 
intention, certainly, to have this conversation with the citizens of 
Oregon and to encourage my colleagues to have this conversation with 
their citizens. How can we move to a system where you can stop worrying 
about whether you will get the care you need, whether your loved ones 
will get the care they need, and that you will not end up bankrupt when 
you are sick or injured? That is the goal.
  Let's have that conversation, America, and keep pushing toward making 
it a reality. I am proud to sponsor this bill. I certainly am proud to 
fight for quality affordable healthcare for every single American 
because it is a basic human right.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.