[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 98 (Wednesday, June 13, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S3865]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               HEALTHCARE

  Mr. SCHUMER. Now, Mr. President, on healthcare. Even as North Korea 
dominates the headlines, Democrats are going to continue to focus on 
the No. 1 issue on the minds of most Americans: healthcare.
  Insurers in State after State are announcing double-digit premium 
increases and blaming Republican healthcare policies for the increase. 
Now, amazingly, the Trump administration is refusing to defend the 
constitutionality of protections for Americans with preexisting 
conditions, turning its back on the most popular and most humane 
advancement in our healthcare system.
  Imagine the return of the days when a mother with a child who has 
cancer can no longer find affordable care for her daughter and the days 
when hard-working Americans who fall on hard times are made to suffer 
and denied healthcare coverage, precisely because they need it so 
desperately. How wrong, how backward, and how immoral that system was, 
and that is where President Trump wants to take us again.
  So we Democrats are going to spend the next few months, including the 
August work period, focusing on the critical issue of the Nation's 
healthcare system. We will be trying to get premiums down, costs down, 
and better healthcare, not the deterioration we have seen under 
President Trump and the Republican congressional leadership.
  We are going to focus on all that our Republican friends have done to 
drive up the costs of healthcare on average Americans and what we 
should be doing to reverse that awful trend.

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