[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3473-3474]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               TRUMPCARE

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on another matter, last night we saw the 
House Republicans plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. 
After 70 years of talking about the same thing over and over again, you 
would think the Republicans would have been able to come up with a 
better plan than this. This plan is a mess.
  First, it will cost average Americans more money for their 
healthcare, while providing fewer benefits; second, it will cut taxes 
for the very wealthy, making average Americans pay more for their 
healthcare; third, it will raise premiums and costs for older 
Americans; and, fourth, it will remove the guarantee that ensures 
Americans with preexisting conditions can get coverage.
  TrumpCare will make health insurance in America measurably worse in 
just about every way and leave more Americans uninsured. It does, 
however, greatly benefit the very wealthy and special interests. Let's 
quickly look at each of the items I just mentioned.
  First, TrumpCare will cost more and you will get less. By eliminating 
minimum coverage for healthcare plans and decreasing the availability 
of tax credits, the cost for average Americans will increase by at 
least $1,000 annually. That is a huge increase, like a tax increase for 
average Americans who need healthcare. It cuts and caps Medicaid, which 
has expanded health insurance to over 20 million Americans, and affects 
poor people, as well as many elderly who are in nursing homes, as well 
as their children who might have to pay for their care with the kinds 
of cuts we are seeing.
  The bill would greatly decrease coverage for maternity care, 
preventive screenings, mental health, opioid treatment, and more. With 
respect to women, TrumpCare would send us back to the Dark Ages. Gone 
are the protections for maternity care, mammograms, and more. Gone is 
all the funding next year for Planned Parenthood, where 2.5 million 
women a year get healthcare. The ACA finally made it the case that you 
no longer had to pay more for coverage just because you are a woman. 
TrumpCare rips that away, undoes the progress we made just a few years 
ago.
  Second, TrumpCare would be a boon to the wealthy, while making 
working Americans pay more. The bill is a winning lottery ticket for 
wealthy Americans. It removes an investment tax and a surcharge on the 
wealthiest Americans, folks with incomes of above $250,000 a year, 
saving them an average of $200,000 a year, and it allows a tax break 
for insurance executives making over $500,000 a year.
  Third, TrumpCare will raise premiums and costs for older Americans. 
It would repeal the Affordable Care Act's premium subsidies and replace 
them with refundable tax credits that could be worth thousands of 
dollars less than what was provided under the ACA. Under this plan, a 
senior without Medicare might receive only $4,000 a year in tax 
credits, an inadequate sum for someone of that age. One illness or a 
bad break, and the value of their tax credit would evaporate. It also 
allows insurers to charge older Americans more simply because of their 
age.
  Finally, TrumpCare would remove the guarantee of coverage for 
Americans with preexisting conditions. TrumpCare is breathtakingly 
irresponsible. It shifts the costs and the burdens from the rich to the 
poor and middle class, from the government to the people, and raises 
premiums on older Americans. It seems designed to cover fewer Americans 
and make that coverage less affordable and less generous. It seems 
designed to make America sick again.

[[Page 3474]]

  We don't even know how large a negative impact this bill will have 
because Republicans are irresponsibly rushing forward before this bill 
even receives a score from the Congressional Budget Office.
  After years of howling at the Moon, at Democrats for rushing through 
the Affordable Care Act, the mantra they said over and over again on 
the floor here and in the House was ``read the bill.'' Republicans are 
having committee votes 2 days after the bill is released.
  No wonder they don't want anyone to know what is in the bill. They 
are rushing it through because it is very hard to defend what they have 
done, and the longer it is out there, the harder it is going to be for 
their colleagues, Republicans, to vote for it. Lawmakers will be voting 
blind, without a final analysis of how this bill will affect overall 
coverage and affordability. I know this affects a lot of my colleagues 
on the other side.
  We have no knowledge of how this affects the deficit. It is removing 
a lot of the revenues for healthcare without replacing them. In all 
likelihood--we will see what CBO says--the deficit is going to go way 
up.
  The President is already throwing his arms around this plan, and 
ultimately he and his party will bear the responsibility for its 
passage and implementation. At this time, I would like to remind 
President Trump that he said repeatedly in the campaign that he would 
expand treatment for Americans suffering from opioid addiction, but 
this mess of a replacement bill would rip treatment away from hundreds 
of thousands of Americans dealing with opioid addiction. President 
Trump said he would ensure Americans with preexisting conditions would 
continue to have access to coverage, but this bill makes that harder in 
several ways. President Trump, in his campaign, said:

       Everybody's got to be covered. . . . I am going to take 
     care of everybody. I don't care if it's going to cost me 
     votes or not. Everybody's going to be taken care of, much 
     better than they're being taken care of now. . . . They can 
     have their doctors. They can have their plans, they can have 
     everything.

  ``They can have everything.''
  Well, if you read the bill the way it reduces funding for Medicaid 
and replaces the Affordable Care Act subsidies with much smaller tax 
credits, there is just no way this bill meets the President's standard.
  Was the Affordable Care Act perfect? No. It could use some 
improvements, but Democrats spent a long time thinking about it and 
crafting the policy to achieve two very real and specific goals, expand 
coverage, lower costs.
  TrumpCare will do the very opposite. If it has any one coherent 
positive goal, it is to limit the tax burdens on the very wealthy, and 
in the process it will badly hurt millions of Americans and throw our 
healthcare system back into chaos.
  If the final product out of the House looks anything like this draft, 
the Senate should consider it a moral duty to reject it.
  I yield the floor.

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