[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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