[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
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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.