[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4620-4621]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      AMERICAN HEALTH CARE ACT DOESN'T HELP MENTAL HEALTH PATIENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Speaker, a few months ago, a woman from my district 
walked into my office and told me about her daughter, a young lady 
diagnosed with acute mental illness at just 4 years of age.
  A decade later, the stories that that young mom shared would split 
your heart: stories of countless ER visits, endless fights with 
insurers and courts, a little girl being boarded at a hospital for 21 
days while they searched up and down the East Coast to find a bed where 
she could stay.
  At 14 years old, she has now spent half of her life in residential 
care. But it was how her mother ended that story that has stuck with 
me. She looked me

[[Page 4621]]

in the eyes and told me that: ``Compared to other people I know, we 
have been lucky.''
  Mr. Speaker, that is not luck. This is a mental health system so 
broken that it is hard to recognize.
  And how have our Republican colleagues followed up in response? They 
have offered a piece of legislation that is one of the largest assaults 
on our mental health system in recent history.
  The GOP repeal bill will remove guaranteed behavioral health coverage 
for everyone covered under the Medicaid expansion. It will abandon 
those suffering from substance abuse disorder to fend for themselves in 
a country ravaged by opioid abuse. It will allow work requirements for 
care, forcing countless people to somehow choose between getting 
treatment and keeping their job. It will help insurers further skirt 
parity laws that require them to treat the mentally ill fairly. It will 
send out-of-pocket costs soaring for the most vulnerable among us.
  Mr. Speaker, one in five Americans today suffer from mental illness. 
These brave men and women and their families that love them deserve 
more than the cheap luck of a broken system. They deserve more than the 
empty rhetoric of a bill that ``might'' cover or ``could'' cover the 
care that they need. They deserve an ironclad commitment from their 
government that we will have their back. This bill does not do that.

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