[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S2798]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Healthcare

  Madam President, 133 million Americans under 65 years of age are 
living with a preexisting condition of some kind. Right now, because of 
the laws on the books, insurance companies cannot charge those 
Americans more or deny them coverage simply because they have a 
preexisting condition. That is a great thing. That is something 
Americans longed for before these protections became law.
  But, unfortunately, that could all change and go away if the lawsuit 
against our healthcare law brought by Republican attorneys general and 
supported by the Trump administration succeeds. It would deprive health 
coverage for tens of millions of Americans and risk denial of coverage 
or exorbitant premiums for up to 133 million Americans with preexisting 
conditions. That scale of cruelty is so large that it is almost 
unimaginable--to tell 133 million Americans that you will not get 
protections if, God forbid, you have an illness and your insurance 
company wants to cut you off. Yet those are the practical consequences 
of the lawsuit that the Trump Department of Justice continues to 
support. While that lawsuit is a fundamental threat to our country's 
healthcare system, led by President Trump and supported by just about 
every Republican in this Chamber, the Trump administration has also 
spent much of the past 2 years sabotaging and undermining healthcare at 
every turn.
  As for this ideology that the government should not help people who 
have healthcare problems, well, about 90 percent of all Americans do 
not agree with that, but somehow it is dominant in the White House and 
dominant in the Republican Senate. Last week the House passed 
legislation that would reverse the Trump administration. It is good 
that the new majority in the House is taking action.
  Later this week the House is poised to pass another package of 
legislation to further protect preexisting conditions and help 
Americans sign up for quality health coverage. But so far none of the 
bills that protect Americans' healthcare have received any attention 
from the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, and that is a shame--a 
real shame.
  Leader McConnell has slowly but surely been turning the Senate into a 
legislative graveyard, where even the most consequential and 
noncontroversial legislation gets buried indefinitely.
  Just take the House-passed legislation on preexisting conditions as 
an example. This is extraordinarily popular with the American people. A 
Kaiser poll found that nearly 70 percent of Americans do not want the 
courts to overturn protections for preexisting conditions. I don't 
think any of my colleagues would argue on the merits that we should go 
back to a healthcare system where insurance companies could 
discriminate against a child with cancer. In fact, several of my 
Republican colleagues who recently won reelection ran ads explicitly 
saying they were for protections for Americans with preexisting 
conditions. So why will the Republican leader not commit to at least 
putting up legislation to do that? I hope it is not because my 
Republican colleagues want to be able to say one thing and do another. 
I hope it is not because of the influence of dark money. I hope that is 
not why. So I would say to the leader: Do not throw healthcare 
legislation into the legislative graveyard. Do not throw the healthcare 
of the American people into the legislative graveyard.
  The American people are worried about rising costs and declining 
quality. They are worried that if they are sick, they could wake up any 
day and no longer have access to healthcare. That is a very real threat 
that millions of Americans face under the Trump administration. 
Healthcare was the No. 1 issue for most Americans in the last election. 
We should be doing something to protect American families from the 
Trump administration's effort to undermine healthcare. I understand 
that my Republican colleagues do not want to cross the President, but 
this issue is too important to too many American families to remain 
silent, too important for our Republican colleagues not to go to their 
leader--especially, those colleagues who campaigned for preexisting 
condition protections--and tell the leader that we must bring this 
legislation to the floor.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.
  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.