[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 197 (Tuesday, December 10, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6939-S6940]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Healthcare

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, when the Trump administration comes to an 
end, it is going to leave behind a host of sad and, I would consider, 
shameful legacies, and right near the top of the list will be the 
shocking number of children who have lost healthcare coverage under 
this administration.
  I am sure folks can't really see the specific numbers here, but this 
trend line is what is important, taking figures from the Census 
Department--people who are not political; they are not Democrats or 
Republicans. What this chart, based on census data shows, is that, for 
year after year after year, we saw the number of uninsured kids in 
America go down. That is something I think was important for our 
country. It said a lot about our values, and it certainly said a lot 
about our healthcare system.
  Sure, we are going to spend more than $3.5 trillion on healthcare. If 
you were to divide that up into 320 million Americans, you can send 
every family of four a check for $40,000. So we are spending enough on 
healthcare, but we are not spending it in the right places.
  In particular, I wanted to come to the floor--and I am glad to see my 
friend, the Presiding Officer, who has worked with me on a variety of 
healthcare issues; we have some areas we are going to be talking about 
in the days ahead. To me, one of the areas of healthcare, until 
recently, we could all take pride in was this chart, which nobody could 
really see, but it showed this trend line in which the number of 
uninsured kids was going down.
  Unfortunately, in the Trump administration, that trend line of years 
and years and years of more kids getting healthcare coverage has been 
reversed, and now more kids are uninsured.
  How did the Trump people do it? They are not going to stand up in 
front of a government agency and say: Oh, we just don't like kids. But 
what they did is hurt those kids and their parents by keeping them in 
the dark for years while there were efforts, bipartisan ones--my 
friend, who joined the Finance Committee recently, knows that our 
previous chairman, Senator Hatch, worked with me for a record-setting 
extension for the Children's Health Insurance Program. The efforts to 
expand coverage for kids were all bipartisan--always--going back, 
really, for decades now, particularly on the Finance Committee.
  I think of the late Senator John Chafee and the late Senator John 
Heinz--people whom I admire so much--and they always wanted to find 
common ground, Democrats and Republicans, working for children. But now 
the Trump administration, in the dark, has come up with proposals that 
have made it harder for parents to sign up their kids, harder for them 
to stay enrolled, and harder for these families--parents with young 
kids--to even know about their rights, their rights to healthcare.
  So now, as a result of the Trump administration's reversing this 
trend of years and years of expanded coverage for kids, we have 
hundreds of thousands of parents clinging to the hope that their kids 
don't get hurt on the playground, catch flu in the classroom, or worse.
  We know that this falls hardest on the families walking an economic 
tightrope. Every month they are balancing their food against their fuel 
bill, their fuel bill against their healthcare. One injury, one 
illness, could be financially devastating for these kids and their 
families, and it can be a major setback for kids for years, if not for 
the rest of their lives. How is a sick kid supposed to succeed in 
school and get ahead if they are unable to see a doctor when they have 
serious illnesses?
  I have mentioned that I know the two sides--this side of the aisle 
and that side of the aisle--can work together to find common ground on 
children's healthcare.
  At the end of his service, Chairman Hatch--who, as my colleague the 
distinguished Presiding Officer knows, cared greatly about kids; he was 
very involved with the late Senator Ted Kennedy and others in coming up 
with the children's health plan--said: We want to set a record. We want 
to get a 10-year extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program.
  We managed to do it. But if you cut the services for people to find 
out how to get enrolled, stay enrolled, and if there are changes in 
programs, those changes in policy, which took place when the Trump 
administration came to Washington, rippled through very quickly to 
communities across the country where vulnerable Americans depend on 
getting good quality healthcare. I just think it is unconscionable.
  As I mentioned earlier in my remarks, for a country with the 
resources America has, you wouldn't step in if you saw this trend of 
progress--fewer uninsured kids--suddenly be reversed. And it really 
happened very quickly. When the Trump administration took over, you 
would say: Hey, let's get Democrats and Republicans together, pull out 
all the stops to fix it, and get the trend line going in the right 
direction again with more kids getting healthcare coverage. We would 
have had to take on the Trump administration here in the Congress. We 
would have had to take on all of those programs in which the Trump 
administration made it harder for kids to get enrolled and to stay 
enrolled, but it would have been the right thing. It would have been 
the right thing for Democrats and Republicans in the Congress to step 
in and take on the Trump administration and say: Look, we understand 
there can be debates and differences of opinion, but you don't score 
points by attacking the services for children available under the 
Affordable Care Act.

  I am going to keep working to reverse this crisis. My colleagues have 
been coming from this side of the aisle all through the day to talk 
about this scourge: the reversal of the trend in this country with 
respect to healthcare coverage. We used to be expanding it for kids. 
Now it is going the other way. The amount of coverage is being reduced.

[[Page S6940]]

  I just want to say, as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance 
Committee, which has jurisdiction over many of the healthcare programs 
that are most important for kids and families on an economic tightrope, 
I and I know my colleagues on the Finance Committee--several of whom 
have spoken over the last few days on this subject--would be glad to 
work with any Republican in this Senate who wants to turn this around. 
If any Republican is listening to this and wants to come to the floor 
and say: I am interested. I am interested in turning around this 
ominous trend. I am interested in turning around this trend where 
healthcare coverage for kids is going down, and I want to work with 
Democrats to do it, I will commit, as the ranking Democrat on the 
Finance Committee, to say: Thank goodness. We have to get on this. This 
is too important to our country and to our future to just sit idly by 
and say we are going to reduce the number of kids who are getting 
healthcare coverage because we are not going to give parents the 
opportunity to find out how to get enrolled and stay enrolled and know 
what their rights are.
  A country as strong and good and rich as ours ought to be looking for 
every possible opportunity to help kids get ahead in life. That, in my 
view, starts with access to healthcare. Right up at the top of the 
list, it starts, in my view, by saying that this trend line, which 
after years and years of showing more kids were getting covered, is now 
going the other way, and fewer kids are getting covered. We are going 
to say, as a body in the U.S. Senate: We are going to change that, and 
in a country that is as strong and good and rich as ours, those 
vulnerable families are going to be able to get healthcare again.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. McSally). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.