[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 141 (Wednesday, September 11, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H5159-H5160]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              MEDICAL DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Michigan (Ms. Tlaib) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, no one should go bankrupt because they get 
sick.
  I was proud to be able to join Director Chopra of the CFPB along with 
Congresswoman Debbie Dingell in hosting a roundtable on the impact of 
medical debt on our families.
  We talked about the groundbreaking proposal by the Biden 
administration that would change the lives of millions of people where 
we would ban and prohibit medical debt from appearing on people's 
credit reports.
  I know this step is long overdue, having introduced legislation like 
the Restoring Unfairly Impaired Credit and Protecting Consumers Act 
which would prohibit outright the reporting of medical debt on consumer 
reports.
  Today, 15 million Americans have $49 billion in medical debt on their 
credit reports. In Wayne County, which is the largest county in 
Michigan, nearly one in six residents have medical debt.
  Behind these numbers are real people. They are our families, whose 
lives are being impacted by this crushing burden all because they got 
sick.
  We heard this firsthand from one of my residents, Livonia resident 
Erika Price, who was devastated by our broken healthcare system while 
watching her husband's body deteriorate.
  For many, medical debt means sleepless nights worrying about making 
ends meet. Some families go bankrupt. Others lose their homes.
  This is wrong, and, again, no one chooses to be sick.
  The burden of medical debt can also haunt families by lowering their 
credit score, preventing them from getting a job, being able to rent a 
home, or even be able to get a car or a small business loan.
  To address this crisis, I joined Senator Bernie Sanders and 
Congressman Ro Khanna in introducing the Medical Debt Cancellation Act 
to eliminate medical debt completely.
  We know that we have sick care in our country, not healthcare. We 
know that this is also an economic and social justice issue and that 
many of our low-income families, our most vulnerable, some of my 
seniors even with insurance, are starting to see medical debt rise. We 
also know many of our Black and Latino neighbors are more likely to be 
impacted.
  We know that without Medicare for All, millions of people will lack 
coverage while expenses continue to rise.
  We all deserve so much better than a broken healthcare system that 
profits off of sickness and leaves more than 20 million people without 
health insurance.
  No one should lose their home or have to declare bankruptcy because 
they got sick. Medical debt should never haunt someone financially. 
This body must take action to relieve this burden for many of our 
residents.


                      Michigan Needs Public Power

  Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, I am sick and tired of DTE Energy's corporate 
greed, while many residents suffer the consequences and go days without 
power in Michigan.
  Our families can't afford more power outages that spoil their 
groceries. And guess what? They only get $25, sometimes $35 in 
reimbursement. It ruins their medicine that is in the refrigerator. It 
leaves our neighbors without access to critical medical devices, all 
because DTE would rather pay out their executives--look it up--and 
their shareholders rather than ensure reliability.
  They defer maintenance and would rather pay their shareholders 
instead of making sure the grid is strong and reliable.
  Last month, with record-breaking heat waves, temperatures reached 95 
degrees in southeast Michigan while over 200,000 residents went without 
power due to DTE Energy's failure to invest in their infrastructure 
upgrades while continuing to raise rates on our families.
  The company made $1.4 billion in profits last year alone. Their CEO, 
Jerry Norcia, makes $10 million a year, but they are begging the 
Michigan Public Service Commission to approve more rate hikes--I think 
it is the third

[[Page H5160]]

or fourth already--and asking our residents to pick up the tab for 
their executives to travel on corporate jets. It is shameful.
  The Michigan Public Service Commission should reject these outrageous 
rate increases. They are not reasonable. They are not fair. We need 
utilities that serve the people, not shareholders.
  We need public power. DTE and other for-profit utilities should be 
turned into publicly owned and operated services. We see it over and 
over again by DTE's actions that we cannot allow these corporations to 
continue because they are always going to put profit before our people.


                             Falling Short

  Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, the Individuals with Disabilities Education 
Act, or IDEA, is often hailed as landmark civil rights law or the most 
important civil rights laws in our country offering a promise of equal 
education for all of our children with disabilities.
  We continue to fall short though in this promise.
  The 50-year-old law is underfunded to this day. We passed it in 1975, 
and we promised to pay 40 percent of the cost of the Federal mandate on 
our school districts, and we are only reaching about 14 to sometimes 17 
percent.
  We are not doing enough.
  Paraprofessionals alone in Detroit are working without a contract 
right now. Our Federal Government needs to cover 40 percent of the 
extra costs of special education.

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