[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 82 (Thursday, May 16, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2914-S2915]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Healthcare
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, across America, there are 130 million
individuals who have a preexisting condition. This means individuals
have a diagnosis, an illness, a medical condition that without the
Affordable Care Act would likely mean they were priced out of insurance
because the costs associated with their illness are so high that no
insurer would provide them coverage or the cost of insurance is much
higher than those who don't have that illness or that condition.
These preexisting conditions don't discriminate. They affect
Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, people who watch
FOX News, people who watch MSNBC. This isn't a partisan issue;
preexisting conditions affect everybody.
In my State, give or take, 522,000 people have preexisting
conditions, and I talk to them every time I go back to Connecticut. I
remember 2 years ago when I was walking across the State--something I
do every year. I take about a week in the summer, and I walk from one
end of the State to the other end--there were families who would find
out on social media where I was going to be walking that day and pre-
position
[[Page S2915]]
themselves hours ahead of time by the side of the road so they could
tell me about their diagnosis. One young woman was sobbing on the side
of the road in Meriden, CT, as she explained to me her lupus diagnosis
and how, without the Affordable Care Act and the protections it
provides her, she would not have insurance; she would not be able to
afford the medications that keep her well and alive; and her life would
be ruined. Those individuals are freaking out today because they have
watched this President--and frankly this Republican Congress--use every
power at their disposal, every tool in their toolkit to try to take
away these protections for people who are sick, for people who, through
no fault of their own, just have higher medical bills than the rest of
us. They don't feel like they should be discriminated against or
forsaken by the health insurance marketplace because of their
unfortunate diagnosis.
The latest assault on people with preexisting conditions comes
through an effort by the administration to allow States to sell
insurance plans that don't cover basic medical needs, plans that would
allow for a skimpy set of benefits to be sold out on the insurance
marketplaces. Now, admittedly, that might be good news for pretty
healthy people who don't want to pay for a full insurance product
because they think they don't need it.
The first problem with that is you are only healthy until you are not
healthy. The second bigger problem is, when all the healthy people go
to these skimpy plans--sometimes called junk plans--and all the people
with preexisting conditions get left behind on the regulated plans,
where insurance is real, where it covers everything you need, costs go
down for the healthy people, and they go through the roof for the sick
people, which is the entire problem we were trying to solve in 2009 and
2010. It is, in fact, the problem the Republicans say repeatedly out on
the campaign trail and back in their districts and States that they
want to solve too. I don't know that I have met a Republican Senator
who doesn't say that they don't think people with preexisting
conditions should be discriminated against. Yet this rule the
administration is proposing is going to allow States to do just that.
It will allow for a ``have and have not'' insurance system, in which
people with preexisting conditions are charged more and people without
preexisting conditions are charged less.
My intention was to come down to the floor today and offer a
unanimous consent request to get us on the road to solving this latest
assault on people with preexisting conditions. Let me explain to you
what my request was going to be. I understand there are Republican
objections, and there is not the ability to object today when I make
this request, so I will reserve the right to make that request until
early next week.
Here is the substance of the request I was planning to make today.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed a piece of legislation
called the Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act, and
what this legislation would have done--and will do, if passed and
signed by the President--is prevent HHS from taking any action to
implement the administration's waivers for States to set up these junk
plans, these skimpy plans.
It is in keeping with the intent of the Affordable Care Act, which is
to allow flexibility for States--there is an ability under the
Affordable Care Act for States to innovate and to be flexible, but the
Affordable Care Act says you can't do that in a way that hurts
consumers. You can't do that in a way that provides less coverage to
consumers.
The rule the Trump administration is proposing, in many of our minds,
is a violation of the Affordable Care Act in and of itself, which is
still the law of the land, but this piece of legislation would clarify
that you cannot allow for the development and widespread sale of these
junk insurance plans without dramatically harming the healthcare of the
130 million Americans who have preexisting conditions.
So my intent was to ask for a unanimous consent request to bring this
bill for a vote in the Senate. I will do that next week.
At some point, we have to act like we actually are the U.S. Senate.
It is not enough to just say over and over again that you support
people with preexisting conditions and then do nothing as the
administration launches a daily, nonstop, unending, unceasing,
relentless effort to destroy healthcare for people with preexisting
conditions.
This is the latest assault on people with preexisting conditions, but
it stands in a very long, ongoing line of actions by this
administration, backed up by Republicans in the Congress, to try to
reduce coverage and increase costs for people with preexisting
conditions.
It started, of course, with the whole repeal effort, which would not
have replaced the Affordable Care Act with anything meaningful. The
bill that passed the House of Representatives would have stripped
healthcare away from 30 million Americans. The tax bill that included a
portion of healthcare repeal that was passed and signed by the
President eliminates healthcare for 13 million Americans, and many of
those have preexisting conditions.
As we speak today, the administration is readying to go to court with
a whole bunch of Republican attorneys general to ask the Federal
judicial system to overturn protections for people with preexisting
conditions. So having failed to get the entirety of the bill repealed
through the Congress, the administration now is going to court to try
to get the protections for people with preexisting conditions repealed.
Once again, this Congress, this Senate is silent on that case. We
have offered another piece of legislation to stop that lawsuit from
going forward. We don't have any takers on the Republican side. This
assault is real. I didn't make it up. It is not imagined. If this court
case that the Trump administration is pushing succeeds, overnight the
entirety of the Affordable Care Act will be invalidated, and there is
no plan to replace it.
If these junk plans go into effect--listen, maybe I will be wrong. I
hope I am wrong. Maybe there will not be a flight of people to these
skimpy plans, but much of the analyses I have seen suggests that will
happen. If it does, there is just no way, other than for the cost to go
up for everybody who is left behind on the regulated plans. I don't
know about you, but when I talk to my folks living paycheck to paycheck
in Connecticut, they don't have a lot of room in their budget for
increased premiums for healthcare. They are maxed out as it is.
So I will stand down for now, but I will be back early next week to
offer this unanimous consent request. I hope, if my colleagues turn it
down, if they don't want to bring up a piece of legislation that would
stop this latest regulatory assault on the Affordable Care Act, that
they will come to the table with other ideas as to how to protect
people with preexisting conditions from this campaign of sabotage by
the administration; that they will finally recognize that this assault
on the Affordable Care Act in the court system is a really awful
precedent to set.
It is going to come back and bite all of us as legislators if it is
successful. Without any real hope of a replacement for the Affordable
Care Act, it leads to a humanitarian disaster in which 20 million to 30
million people lose insurance because of it.
This is as important as it gets. There is very little that matters to
people more than their health and their healthcare, and I hope that
possibly next week we can come together as a body and finally do
something about the administration's attempt to take away these
protections for sick people and people with complicated diagnoses all
across the country.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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