[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 187 (Wednesday, November 28, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7167-S7168]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Healthcare

  Mr. President, this afternoon, I want to give a concluding speech on 
the topic of healthcare. I want to talk about the importance of 
ensuring that all Americans--and especially my State, all Floridians--
have access to critical health services through the Affordable Care 
Act.
  When the ACA passed, it stated that an insurance company cannot deny 
health insurance coverage because a person had a preexisting condition. 
In other words, that means you cannot be denied health coverage because 
you have something like asthma, cancer, heart trouble, diabetes, ALS, 
or, in some cases, even a rash. Before the Affordable Care Act, even 
being a woman was considered a preexisting condition.
  Nearly everyone has a preexisting condition. In Florida alone, almost 
8 million people have a preexisting condition. We think of our 
neighbors, our friends and family members, and we thought of them when 
we passed the ACA. We worked very hard to give them the healthcare 
protections they needed.
  In these past few years, I have talked to folks all over our country. 
In Florida, I have talked to the very folks we fought so hard to ensure 
they have health insurance and healthcare. Last year, for example, I 
spoke with a well-known community leader from Hollywood, FL--Elaine 
Geller. Her daughter, Megan, was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of 
26. At the time she was admitted to the hospital, Megan's blood count 
was 4. She had water on the heart. She had pneumonia. She went through 
one round of chemo, and it put the cancer in remission. She was 
initially hospitalized in New York, where she had been working as a 
special-ed teacher, but she returned to Florida to receive care at the 
University of Miami's Comprehensive Cancer Center--one of the finest 
cancer centers around the country.
  As the story goes, Megan's doctor told Megan and her mom, Elaine, 
that she needed a transplant, which required a payment of $150,000 
upfront. From January until about the end of April, Megan lived at that 
Comprehensive Cancer Center at the university and received multiple 
rounds of chemo, biopsies, and various other treatments. Do you know 
what her mom said to me? She said that thanks to the Affordable Care 
Act, as a mom, she could focus all of her energy on her daughter. She 
didn't have to worry about all the

[[Page S7168]]

bills that were piling up, and ultimately she didn't have to write a 
check for the transplant. That is because Megan had health insurance 
despite a preexisting condition, and the Affordable Care Act created a 
transitional program to cover eligible individuals with preexisting 
conditions, like Megan.
  After Megan left the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, her 
cancer went into remission, but then the cancer came back. The 
remission only lasted 63 days. They flew to Texas, to the MD Anderson 
Cancer Center. Why travel across the country to get cancer treatments? 
Because when you are dying--when a mom is watching her daughter die, 
there is nothing she as a parent would not do. You can't put a price on 
your child's life. It would do us a lot of good if we would remember 
that.
  Sadly, Megan had a fall and hit her head. She died at the age of 28. 
Her total care during that battle with cancer could have cost Elaine, 
her mom, $5 million. Thanks to the ACA, because she had health 
insurance, Megan's part of that treatment was $70,000. That not only 
saved her from going bankrupt, it also gave her more time to spend with 
her daughter. Anyone who has lost someone knows that every second 
counts. We shouldn't take things for granted.
  Elaine said that her daughter would be proud to know that her story 
of the Affordable Care Act matters. It matters to me as their Senator, 
and that is why I am telling it on the floor of the Senate.
  And it should matter to every one of these Senators here.
  Let me give you another person that I met along the trail. I met with 
one of the most courageous 14-year-olds whom I have ever seen, JJ 
Holmes, and his family, who are from Longwood, FL.
  JJ has cerebral palsy and requires a wheelchair and constant 
attention to get around and to be taken care of. He can only 
communicate with his computer vocalization device. It is just amazing, 
since JJ can't directly communicate except by the sparkle in his eyes. 
He uses his left knee on a device on the wheelchair to hit it and it 
goes to a computer screen, and he can type out the words and the sounds 
in order to give him an ability to communicate with another ordinary 
person.
  JJ has a preexisting condition--he has cerebral palsy--and all of the 
efforts to repeal and undermine the ACA are undermining his access to 
care and his ability to live. Each attempt to repeal the ACA was 
another threat to his very life.
  His mom told me that there is so much of a daily struggle, worry, and 
heartache when you have a child who is severely disabled, and the ACA 
finally gave that family the much needed security, and it lifted a huge 
burden of how in the world were they going to cope with this medical 
condition of their child.
  I will give you another example in Florida. Earlier this year, I was 
joined at a local roundtable on healthcare by Elizabeth Isom from St. 
Petersburg. Elizabeth told me that the ACA had saved her life and 
allowed her to purchase insurance for the very first time. She doesn't 
know how she is going to be able to afford coverage if the lifetime 
caps of the law are reinstated and if essential health benefits are not 
provided as the ACA provides.
  Elizabeth was a productive member of society. She was a social 
worker, and then she developed a sinus tumor. She went without 
insurance for 3 years, during which her health was constantly 
deteriorating and it was to the point that she thought she was dying. 
She had vital organ damage and reached complete disability. The mass in 
her sinus had extended into her skull.
  After the ACA became the law of the land, she purchased insurance 
through healthcare.gov. She said it is the best insurance she has ever 
had because it covered essential health benefits like the preventative 
services.
  So let's think about this just in these three cases that I have 
given. The ACA protects people like Megan with preexisting conditions 
from being charged more simply because of their diagnosis. It protects 
people like JJ from being unable to afford care because they have hit 
annual or lifetime limits on coverage. It protects people like 
Elizabeth from being denied treatment because insurers are now required 
to cover essential health services--services and benefits like 
hospitalizations and prescription drugs.
  These folks are not the only ones that I have talked to about how the 
ACA has changed their life. The American people--not just Floridians--
have been writing to us, have been calling to us, have been showing up 
in our townhalls, have been showing up at our roundtables, have been 
approaching me on the street corner, at the airport, at events all over 
Florida to share how important the ACA is to them. The Affordable Care 
Act has given people healthcare they otherwise would never have had. 
Over and over, they have come to me and said: We want to see a 
bipartisan fix--a fix to the ACA, not a repeal. Why can't you just get 
together and fix the ACA?
  How many times have I made that plea on the floor of the Senate? And 
they are right. There is a lot of work to be done to bring down the 
cost of healthcare, to make insurance more affordable, and to increase 
coverage for people who still don't have it. But in the meantime, the 
Trump administration is doing everything in its power to undermine and 
undo the existing law that has helped so many so much.
  We have seen an Executive order of President Trump's stating that the 
policy of his administration was to ``seek the prompt repeal'' of the 
ACA. We have seen rules coming out of the Trump administration cutting 
in half the length of time that people had to enroll in plans on 
healthcare.gov, eliminating low-income subsidies, and cutting outreach 
and advertising for enrollment by 90 percent.
  Why would you make it harder for people to sign up for health 
insurance if your intention wasn't to undermine the Affordable Care 
Act, which is exactly what the Trump administration's intention is?
  We have seen the implementation of expanding short-term health plans. 
These are plans that are less than a year or, as they really are 
designed, junk plans, and that is just what they are. They don't offer 
essential health benefits. They offer extremely limited coverage so 
that people don't have the coverage and they don't have the coverage of 
preexisting conditions. They remove protections for people with those 
preexisting conditions. They do not cover that list of 10 or 12 things 
called essential health benefits, like maternity care and prescription 
drug costs.
  We have seen multiple Republican repeal-and-replace bills that have 
come before the House and before this Senate. We have seen this Trump 
administration claim that they do care about those with preexisting 
conditions. Just last month President Trump tweeted that ``Republicans 
will protect people with preexisting conditions far better than the 
Dems!'' But that is not what they are doing, nor is that what they have 
done.
  Well, Mr. President, if that is the case, then why is your 
administration supporting the lawsuit Texas vs. U.S. Department of 
Health and Human Services--that very lawsuit that was brought forward 
by Republican attorneys general, including Florida's attorney general, 
urging a Federal court to strike down preexisting conditions and 
patient protections as unconstitutional, and it would cause a chaos in 
our healthcare system.
  You are not protecting 133 million Americans with preexisting 
conditions. No, what you are doing is eliminating their healthcare, and 
that includes 17 million children.
  The administration should better look at their situation and do the 
opposite of what they have been doing. I ask the American people to 
demand that the Trump administration stop undermining the ACA, get to 
work as an administration, do its job, and implement all parts of the 
existing law, the Affordable Care Act. We should be looking for ways to 
help people like Elaine, JJ, Megan, and Elizabeth. We should be looking 
for ways to help them get through the tough times. We should be working 
together in a bipartisan way to make the ACA work better, not try to 
kill it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). The Senator from Hawaii.