[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 872]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              KEEP THE ACA

  (Mr. HECK asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HECK. Mr. Speaker, I have a constituent named Martha. She goes by 
Marty.
  Marty was studying to earn her bachelor's degree in nursing at 
Pacific Lutheran University when she was diagnosed with rectal cancer. 
Not good.
  Without medical insurance, as we all know, that is a certain death 
sentence. There is no other way about it. But it wasn't for Marty. 
Frankly, less than a year before she had finally found affordable 
healthcare insurance for herself through the Washington State Health 
Benefit Exchange.
  Every family, every person in this Chamber, has been affected by it. 
Cancer has a way of ripping bodies apart, ripping families apart, and 
ripping communities apart.
  It didn't rip Marty apart. Through her strength, courage, and health 
insurance, she persevered. She has conviction that God used her 
community of friends and her family and the Affordable Care Act to help 
her through treatment and into recovery.
  Not only could Marty share that story with me back in 2015, but she 
graduated cum laude from PLU in nursing just this last December. I am 
sharing her remarkable story with you--it could be replicated millions 
of times--to urge you to set aside and rise above partisan politics and 
not repeal the lifesaving Affordable Care Act. I ask you to do this not 
just for the sake of Marty, but because there, my friends, but for the 
grace of God, go each and every one of us.

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