[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 4387]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                HEALTHCARE PLAN BAD FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS

  (Mr. AGUILAR asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. AGUILAR. Mr. Speaker, here are the facts: the Affordable Care Act 
covered over 20 million Americans. The House Republicans' bill will 
strip 24 million people of their health care.
  I have received thousands of calls, emails, and social media messages 
regarding this topic from constituents opposing a repeal and sharing 
their stories of how the Affordable Care Act has helped them and how 
terrified they are of losing their coverage. I would like to share just 
one of those stories.
  Daria from Redlands wrote to me about how Medi-Cal, California's 
Medicaid program, is called a lifeline in her family. Daria, who 
suffers from a debilitating and rare disease, closed her letter by 
saying: ``There are tens of millions more like me. American citizens, 
Moms and dads. Working hard, struggling with illness. Loving our 
families through hardship and disease. All of us--these tens of 
millions of American families, would be absolutely devastated by the 
loss of our insurance coverage.''
  Mr. Speaker, what would you say to Daria about your plan that would 
cut Medicaid and raise the cost of insurance on families like hers 
while giving tax breaks to the uberwealthy?
  Instead of working with Democrats to improve the bill, Republicans 
drafted it in secret, rushed it through committee in the dead of night, 
and are now ramming it through Congress. This plan is bad for the 
middle class.

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