[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5530-5531]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, no one can dispute that Winston Churchill 
was a statesman and the most famous in the history of our world. This 
is what he said:

       Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between 
     the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the 
     future.

  Why do I say that? Even though those remarks were made more than 70 
years ago, I believe there are many in Congress who should focus on 
what Winston Churchill said because it is true. For far too long 
Republicans have obsessed over the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare. The 
Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. It has been for more than 4 
years.
  From the very day this law was signed, Republicans have zealously 
worked to undermine it in so many different ways. Day in and day out 
they have clamored for repeal of this bill. House Republicans have 
voted more than 50 times trying desperately to cripple ObamaCare. They 
shut down the government trying to defund health care reform. And how 
has that worked? While they have obsessed over the past, the country 
has moved forward.
  Now Republicans have to face the fact that millions of their own 
constituents, millions of Republicans are benefiting from health care 
reform in record numbers. But my Republican friends still insist on 
nothing short of repeal. So I ask my Republican colleagues, what would 
they like to repeal? What would repeal look like?
  Because of the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans can no 
longer be denied health insurance because of preexisting conditions. 
What are some of the preexisting conditions that caused so much trouble 
in the past? Diabetes. How about this one: You are a woman. Many 
insurance companies considered women having a preexisting disability 
because they were women. Millions of young adults are now able to stay 
on their parents' policies until age 26. That is more than 3 million. 
Millions of seniors are saving huge amounts of money on prescription 
drugs because

[[Page 5531]]

we are in the process of filling the doughnut hole. This year alone 
millions of Americans will receive maternity coverage. Repealing the 
Affordable Care Act would be repealing many of these and many more. I 
could spend a long time talking about what would be repealed.
  My counterpart, the Senator from Kentucky, will probably address the 
Senate after I finish. In his home State of Kentucky, 360,000 people 
have signed up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Kentucky is 
not New York; it is not Texas; it is not California. It is a sparsely 
populated State, somewhat like Nevada. Yet 360,000 people have signed 
up for coverage. Of those, 75 percent were previously uninsured. That 
is approaching 300,000 people. Over a quarter million Kentuckians who 
did not have insurance now have health coverage under the Affordable 
Care Act. In other words, ObamaCare has reduced the uninsured 
population of Kentucky by 40 percent.
  I wonder when my friend from Kentucky will explain to the 270,000 
Kentuckians how he plans to repeal the law without stripping the new 
health benefits. How exactly will he and his Republican colleagues 
guarantee that their newly insured constituents have no lapses in 
coverage? Remember, they want to do away with 270,000 people who didn't 
have insurance. They want to do away with 360,000 people in Kentucky 
who are signed up for insurance. So I await their answer.
  In the meantime, Democrats will keep looking to the future, and the 
future of the Affordable Care Act is bright. Every day more and more 
Americans are getting health coverage under the law. On Monday we 
learned that 7,045,000 people had already signed up and about 1 million 
people on the State exchanges--370,000 in Kentucky, for example. We 
know there are more than 3 million young people on their parents' 
insurance because of that. We know there are millions of people who are 
now covered because of their ability to become part of Medicaid. So we 
are talking about a lot of people.
  Health reform is working, and the law is here to stay. The more 
Americans see the law is working, the more they want it to stay. The 
time of fighting over the past is over. Remember what Winston Churchill 
said:

       Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between 
     the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the 
     future.

  I say this very seriously: I invite my Republican friends to look to 
the future. Put this obstruction behind them. Work with us to make the 
Affordable Care Act even better for their constituents and our 
constituents and Americans generally. Together, we can help millions 
more Americans get the health coverage they deserve.

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