[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 208 (Wednesday, December 10, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8589-S8590]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               HEALTHCARE

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to respond to my colleague 
and friend from Wyoming and just note one thing that happened last 
Sunday that, I think, puts this whole debate into perspective.
  I go into a restaurant in the Loop in Chicago. My wife and I have 
breakfast there regularly. It is well known. It is named Lou 
Mitchell's. Lou Mitchell's restaurant claims they are the beginning of 
Route 66 in America. Tourists come from all over the world to travel 
Route 66, and they start at Lou Mitchell's. Well, that is where my wife 
and I start with breakfast on Sunday morning. And we have a favorite 
waitress whom we have been working with for years, and a lady who 
serves as maitre d' who is 94 years old. She comes to work every day. 
It is a great place. It is a real slice of America, a real slice of 
Chicago. It is usually a pretty happy place, too--rooting for the Bears 
and talking about upcoming holidays.
  It wasn't that way with my friend the waitress--I will call her 
Sara--last Sunday. She came over to me and said: Senator, do you know 
what is going to happen to my health insurance on January 1? And I 
said: No.
  And she said: I am going to have to pay 3 or $400 more a month for me 
and my husband under the Affordable Care Act. What happened? How can I 
possibly pay that amount of money as a working waitress?
  She is 63 years old. She has been working as a waitress for years, 
and she has had a ton of medical problems. I know that as a fact.
  And I said to her: Well, what happened was, we didn't approve the 
continuation of the tax treatment for your health insurance premium. 
There was a dispute in the Congress over that issue, and we will have 
our chance this week on Thursday, when there is going to be a vote on 
whether we give you the tax credit that you have been receiving for 
years to help you pay your health insurance premiums or not. If we can 
get 13 Republicans to join us, we could continue to pay that basic 
helping hand for you and for so many others who work hard, and that is 
the only way you can get health insurance.
  She said: I don't know what I will do if you don't change the law.
  And I said: I don't know either.
  I thought, when I left her, that at least we would have a chance for 
a bipartisan response to solve this problem. The speech just given by 
my friend--and he is my friend--and colleague from Wyoming tells me 
that there is little chance that this is going to happen. When it is 
all over, Sara is going to face a health insurance bill which she can't 
pay as a waitress--a working waitress. I don't know what she will do. I 
suspect she will just have to cancel her insurance coverage at a time 
when she still has some serious medical problems. That is the reality 
of it.
  So I would say to my friend from Wyoming, there is plenty of 
opportunity for your party, as the majority party in the U.S. Senate, 
to call a hearing and address any changes you want to make in the 
Affordable Care Act. If you believe there is fraud, and we can 
establish it, count me in. Let's do it together. Let's make it 
bipartisan. I don't want to waste a taxpayer's dollar, and I want to 
provide real healthcare to people who otherwise can't afford it. We 
need to do that.
  In the meantime, what are we going to do about Sara's health 
insurance premium that in 2 or 3 weeks is going to go up and almost 
double. What is she going to do about it? Shouldn't we care about her 
first?
  This is really a triage, and the first thing to do is to help Sara, 
make sure that her family has health insurance coverage.
  The second thing we do in the triage is address changes in the 
system. I am open to them. I think some of the things that were said on 
the floor probably exaggerated the situation, but I am open to any 
changes which want to be suggested that will improve this system. But 
let's start with this triage by helping Sara, the waitress at Lou 
Mitchell's in the city of Chicago--make sure that she has health 
insurance when it is all over.

  Give us those 13 votes and call for the first meeting of the Congress 
in the next calendar year to address any fraud in the system we can 
find and deal with

[[Page S8590]]

it openly and directly. But don't walk away from 24 million Americans 
who count on this as an avenue for health insurance and say that 
because there is fraud in the system committed by insurance companies 
or insurance brokers, we are going to show you; we are going to 
basically say Sara gets no health insurance. That is wrong. It is just 
plain wrong.

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