[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4739-4743]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    ADDRESSING HEALTHCARE CHALLENGES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mast). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) is 
recognized until 10 p.m. as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your agreeing to be down here 
with me tonight. I came down to talk about health care, but I actually 
have a personal story I want to tell before that begins, right there in 
the middle of the realm of health care, a friend of mine back home in 
Georgia. His name is Jon Richards.
  Mr. Speaker, you have folks like Jon Richards in your district, 
people who just believe that, if only they work hard enough and long 
enough, they can make things better for their entire community. Jon is 
one of those folks. And what I love most about Jon is he looks for 
those things that other folks aren't doing.
  You know, there are those folks back home. Everybody wants that 
glamorous job. Everybody wants to do that thing that comes with the 
perks or the fringe benefits. Jon Richards was attracted to those jobs 
that he knew would matter, that he knew needed to get done but other 
folks weren't filling those shoes.
  Mr. Speaker, I tell you this about Jon because Jon was diagnosed with 
liver cancer; and as is always true when you have a friend get 
diagnosed with cancer, you believe that they are going to be better. I 
learned this week that Jon has been moved to hospice and isn't getting 
better.
  Mr. Speaker, Jon was one of the first folks to give me even the time 
of day when I thought about seeking this opportunity to serve. Jon was 
the first person there every Saturday morning when breakfast was 
getting started for the Gwinnett County Republican Party, and he was 
the last one to leave when the Young Republicans down at the University 
of Georgia were finishing up.
  It was young people that were his passion, Mr. Speaker. Jon saw a 
Republican Party that he worried was going to become more closed. He 
worked to open it up. Jon saw a Republican Party that was getting 
grayer. He was working with young people who were our future. Jon saw a 
Republican Party that had an opportunity to make a difference, and he 
seized that opportunity every single day.
  In 2014, Mr. Speaker, the entire State of Georgia, Georgia Republican 
Party, named Jon Richards the Volunteer of the Year. Truth be told, he 
would have won that honor every single year, you just can't give it to 
somebody over and over again. I think Jon appreciated that.
  If you go back and try to look for pictures of Jon so you can put a 
name with a face, Mr. Speaker, you are likely not to see too many. He 
was also the guy who had the camera around his neck taking pictures of 
everybody else, making sure that everybody else had something to 
remember the day by, making sure that everybody else was involved and 
appreciated, making sure everybody else was served.

                              {time}  2115

  I have known Jon Richards for a long time. I have never known him to 
do a single thing to benefit himself. Time and time and time again, he 
did the things that others wouldn't do. Time and time and time again, 
he would pull me aside and say: Rob, I know how we can be better 
together.
  There is no replacement for Jon Richards--not in our county, not in 
our State, not in my life.
  Mr. Speaker, I haven't had much experience saying good-bye to folks 
over the years. I have been extremely blessed in that way. But I hope 
that you will join me as you say your prayers tonight in praying for my 
friend in hospice, Jon Richards, and for his family as he enters what 
will be a very long weekend for him.
  Mr. Speaker, Jon would be the first one to be standing outside these 
doors pushing us forward on healthcare reform, and he would be doing it 
because he sees the human condition that is affected by health care. He 
sees the families that have expectations, families to whom promises 
have been made, families to whom promises have been broken. And he 
knows that we can do better.
  Mr. Speaker, what he and I would often sit and talk about is that 
there are challenges in this country that absolutely, positively have 
to be addressed. I have friends on the right, I

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have friends on the left, and I often believe that if we could just sit 
down in a room together, we would solve them if we could agree on what 
the problem was.
  Mr. Speaker, I have a chart here. You can't see it from where you 
sit, but it shows you where America gets its healthcare coverage. I 
bring this up because that is the crux of the healthcare debate that we 
are having here. About 46 percent of Americans, Mr. Speaker, get their 
coverage from their employer. When the President was pushing the 
Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010, he was talking about the 
uninsured Americans, and surely we can do more for those families who 
don't have access to health care. But 46 percent of Americans had 
access to health care, had it through their employer, were not seeking 
help or improvement, but in an effort to make a difference for the 
small percentage of Americans who are uninsured, the President and my 
friends on the Democratic side of the aisle chose to reregulate all 
health care across the country.
  It wasn't just the lie of the year, as the newspaper PolitiFact 
called it, Pinocchios--if you like your doctor, you can keep it; if you 
like your doctor, you can keep it. It wasn't just that that promise was 
broken; it is that folks who weren't seeking any help at all got caught 
up in this net of a new Federal regulatory scheme.
  Mr. Speaker, about 46 percent of Americans get their health insurance 
from their employer. About 17 percent of Americans are on Medicare. We 
have got another 17 percent of Americans that are on Medicaid or CHIP 
or those safety net programs. Even here today, after the passage of the 
Affordable Care Act, 8 percent of Americans are uninsured. Now, we have 
folks who are in the exchanges--they are represented here--that is 
about 12.4 percent of the population. We have folks who are on Medicaid 
represented here; that is about 11.3 percent of the population. And we 
have folks who don't have any insurance at all.
  Mr. Speaker, if we would come together to solve the problem for folks 
who didn't have access to health care, I believe we could have found a 
solution together. Instead, what we tried to do was reregulate the 
entire healthcare system, even for all of the Americans who were 
perfectly happy with their care. And it didn't work.
  You don't have to take my word for it, Mr. Speaker. I can quote from 
my big newspaper back home in my district, The Atlanta Journal-
Constitution: ``Aetna to pull out of Georgia's ObamaCare insurance 
marketplace.''
  Many counties in Georgia now, Mr. Speaker, only have one insurer to 
choose from. Humana has announced it is pulling out.
  Union Leader in New Hampshire: ``Another ACA failure Bad idea keeps 
getting worse.''
  Over in Kaiser Health News in Arkansas: ``Largest U.S. Health Insurer 
Pulls Out of Health Exchanges in Georgia, Arkansas.''
  From The Washington Post: ``Aetna chief executive says ObamaCare is 
in a `death spiral.'''
  And from the Courier-Tribune in North Carolina: ``Blue Cross projects 
$400 million loss in NC on ACA in just two years.''
  Mr. Speaker, while we can argue about whether we correctly identified 
the problem to begin with, while we can argue about whether or not we 
crafted the right solution to begin with, what is undisputed is that 
the Affordable Care Act is failing, and it is taking American families 
down with it. That is not just the newspapers talking, Mr. Speaker.
  I will quote from former President Barack Obama. In August of last 
year, he says: ``Despite this progress''--he is talking about the 
progress of the ACA--``too many Americans still strain to pay for their 
physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles, or pay 
their monthly insurance bills; struggle to navigate a complex, 
sometimes bewildering system; and remain uninsured.''
  Twenty million Americans remain uninsured. After all of the 
President's efforts, he still recognized in August of last year there 
was much more to be done because the efforts that he tried failed.
  Governor Mark Dayton, a Democrat from Minnesota, in October of last 
year, he says: ``The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer 
affordable. . . . ''
  The aspiration was that premiums would come down by $2,500, but the 
reality is that premiums were going up by double digits, and in some 
cases triple digits. The Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable.
  And former President Bill Clinton, in October of last year, Mr. 
Speaker, he said: ``So you've got this crazy system where all of a 
sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who 
are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their 
premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest 
thing in the world.''
  There is a group of people, mostly small-business owners and 
employees, who make just a little too much money to qualify for 
Medicaid expansion or for the tax incentives who can't get affordable 
health insurance premiums in a lot of places.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't believe health care is a partisan issue. 
Regulation and how we use it may be a partisan issue. Federal control 
of whether we should use it may be a partisan issue, but providing 
Americans access to health care is an American issue, and every one of 
these Democrats I have just cited recognize the failures of the current 
system. I don't say that, Mr. Speaker, to try to point the finger of 
blame. I say it because either we believe that everything is working 
just great and we should all pack our bags and head back home to the 
district, or we believe that there are American families in crisis that 
are calling on us to serve them.
  You can't see this map, Mr. Speaker, but it shows some of that 
crisis. In just 1 year, from 2016 to 2017, Mr. Speaker, the number of 
counties in America that only have one insurer to choose from 
quintupled. I will say that again. In just 1 year, from 2016 to 2017, 
so severe is the death spiral of the exchanges across the country, the 
number of American counties that no longer have choices and are limited 
to a single insurer has increased 500 percent.
  Mr. Speaker, the number of counties that only have one insurer is 
represented here in the color of orange. You see it in 2016, you see it 
in 2017. Five entire States, Mr. Speaker, in a healthcare system that 
was designed to provide consumers with choices, have no choice of 
insurer whatsoever. I say that because we have gotten wrapped around 
the political axle here, Mr. Speaker, as if somehow if you are on the 
Republican side of the aisle, you cannot recognize that the Affordable 
Care Act achieved any successes whatsoever, and if you are on the 
Democratic side of the aisle, you can't recognize that the Affordable 
Care Act has failed anyone in any way whatsoever. Both of those 
positions are nonsense.
  I tell you that if you have spent a trillion dollars on this 
program--and you have--I hope a family has been helped. I know some 
families that have been helped. But I also know families that have been 
crushed. We need to repeal the Affordable Care Act for those families 
that have been crushed, and we need to replace the Affordable Care Act 
for those families that have been helped because that help is rapidly 
eroding.
  Mr. Speaker, I want you to think about the thought, the idea that is 
the Affordable Care Act. The idea is we are going to provide these 
choices, and then we are going to provide these government subsidies, 
and folks are going to have access to health care for the very first 
time. It is a wonderful idea: provide choice, provide support, provide 
access. The reality is, though, Mr. Speaker, with those choices, with 
those subsidies, with that offer of access, almost 20 million Americans 
said: Forget it, I am out.
  Now, you remember this whole plan was put together where the IRS 
comes and fines you if you are out. So what began as an idea that said, 
``We are going to provide you with choice, we are going to provide you 
with support, and that is going to get you your access,'' 20 million 
Americans have decided that plan has so failed them, they

[[Page 4741]]

would rather pay the IRS a penalty to the tune of $4 billion last 
year--rather, pay the IRS a penalty than access the Affordable Care 
Act. That is a failure. It is a failure.
  Who is it failing most, Mr. Speaker?
  If you look at those folks who are in this almost 20 million pool, 45 
percent of them are age 35 or younger. I don't fall under the age 
category of 35 and under, Mr. Speaker, but I can tell you that folks 
who are 35 and under cost less to take care of than folks who are my 
age bracket and older. So if you are going to try to craft a national 
insurance system, you need these people who are 35 and under to be 
involved--enthusiastically involved. Rather than getting involved with 
the choices and with the subsidies to get the access, 20 million 
Americans have said: It is not for me. I will pay the fine instead.
  Most of them young people. If we can't agree that that is a failure, 
Mr. Speaker, if we can't agree that the system can't stand in that way, 
we are going to have a tough time finding a solution.
  What you heard so often today about the solution that is being 
proposed in this body is that older Americans are getting the toughest 
end of the deal. There is a little truth to that, Mr. Speaker.
  What the Affordable Care Act did is it said you have young, healthy 
people; you have older people who are likely to be sicker. The law of 
the land at the time was that the cost spread between the youngest and 
the oldest could be 500 percent, 5 times more for the oldest, highest 
risk people than the youngest, lowest risk people.
  Sure, it is insurance, right?
  Older cars, different pricing than newer cars. Houses with sprinkler 
systems, different prices than houses without sprinkler systems. It is 
just actuarial experience.
  But the Affordable Care Act says we are going to compress that from 
one to five, a 500 percent spread, down to one to three, a 300 percent 
spread. What that did was lower rates below the actuarial experience 
for older Americans--that was great for older Americans--and, at the 
same time, raise rates for younger Americans, which forced all the 
younger Americans out of the marketplace, which then raised rates for 
all Americans.
  I will quote from Grace-Marie Turner. She is the president of the 
Galen Institute. She testified in front of the Committee on the Budget 
this year on this issue. She said this, Mr. Speaker: 
`` . . . young people purchasing individual policies in or out of the 
exchanges are required to pay much more for their policies than their 
actuarially-expected costs because of the law's required 3:1 age rating 
band. Forcing the young to pay more drives costs up for everyone.
  ``The average 64-year-old consumes six times as much health care, in 
dollar value, as the average 21-year-old.''

                              {time}  2130

  Insurance is about experience. There is a 1 in 100 chance of 
something bad happening to you, you pay 1 one-hundredth of the price of 
that bad episode, 100 of you get in the pool together, you share the 
risk.
  Actuarially, a 64-year-old consumes six times more health care than a 
young person. But we compressed that to three times in terms of the 
billing.
  Dr. Turner goes on to say this: ``Under the ACA's age-rating 
requirements, insurers cannot charge their oldest policyholders more 
than three times the price they charge their youngest customers.''
  If every customer were to remain in the insurance market, this would 
have the net effect of increasing premiums for 21-year-olds by 75 
percent, and reducing them for 64-year-olds by 13 percent. Now, think 
about this. This is the system that we have created.
  If you can get the young people to stay in the system--which you 
cannot--the young people are paying rates 75 percent higher than they 
should so that older Americans can pay premiums 13 percent lower than 
they should. But we are losing all the young people because 77 percent 
is forcing these folks out. They are not dumb folks. They are making 
good choices about their own self-interests. If their insurance prices 
are too high, they reject the insurance.
  An individual in my district, Mr. Speaker, from Buford, Georgia, 
wrote to me and said: Rob, I am a full-time student with a part-time 
job that doesn't offer health or dental insurance. I can't get health 
insurance through my parents because they are on Medicare. I shop for 
health plans, but most are out of my budget. I shouldn't have to pay a 
fine if a healthcare plan is not in my budget. There should be 
alternatives to this plan. Please help.
  Say young people don't want insurance. I don't believe that is true. 
I do think young people believe they are going to live forever and they 
are never going to get sick. But they do worry about that rainy day, 
forbid the thought, should something bad happen. But you can't buy a 
policy you can't afford, and we have priced these young people out of 
the marketplace.
  When we price young people out of the marketplace, rates go up for 
everybody. When rates go up for everybody, more young people drop out 
of the marketplace. And that death spiral that Aetna's CEO recognized, 
grows faster and faster. Which brings us to the solution that we are 
working on here together.
  I don't know what you thought of President Trump when you first met 
him, Mr. Speaker. I don't know what you thought of the campaign and how 
things were going to transpire in these first 60 days of a new 
administration. But I think a lot of folks in my district imagined the 
President as a take-it-or-leave-it kind of guy, my-way-or-the-highway 
kind of guy. I think you would agree with me that nothing could be 
further from the truth in our experience.
  This is what he tweeted out. As you know, that is our new method of 
communication here in Washington, D.C. This is what he tweeted out when 
this House dropped its healthcare bill. He said: ``Our wonderful new 
healthcare bill is now out for review and negotiation. ObamaCare is a 
complete and total disaster--is imploding fast.''
  It is out for review and negotiation. And those weren't just words, 
Mr. Speaker. You have seen it. You have seen it going on this week. You 
have seen it going on even to the eleventh hour. The President has 
never said: My way or the highway. He has brought people in from every 
end of the political spectrum to work with them on their ideas, to work 
to see what we could do more for children, more for the near elderly, 
more for families, how do we get the incentives in the right place. Day 
in and day out, 16, 17, 20 hours a day, the President has been working 
to make this better.
  I could not feel better about the process. I don't believe any 
particular party has a monopoly on good ideas. I don't believe any 
particular Member has a monopoly on good ideas. I believe we work best 
when we work collaboratively. And I am so proud of our President for 
embracing exactly that--the art of a deal.
  Mr. Speaker, there are four main parts of our replacement plan, four 
main parts.
  Number one, Medicaid reforms to allow States the freedom to run their 
own Medicaid programs.
  I serve on the Rules Committee with Liz Cheney from Wyoming. I 
promise you, the rural nature in the low-population area of Wyoming 
means she needs a very different Medicaid program than the high-
density, high-population area of metro Atlanta that I serve.
  So often, the State programs dictated by the Federal Government lock 
States in to a one-size-fits-all solution. Or the States can come 
begging to Washington, D.C., for an exception or an exemption or a 
waiver. You shouldn't have to come beg Washington, D.C., to best serve 
your constituents, Mr. Speaker. We give folks the flexibility to run 
these State-based programs to serve the most vulnerable of State 
populations.
  Number two, a patient and State stability fund.
  Mr. Speaker, the challenge at any insurance pool is what do you do 
with the sickest of the individuals in that pool. If I buy insurance 
today and I am not yet sick, well, now I am in the insurance pool and I 
am paying for whatever

[[Page 4742]]

my actuarial risk is. But forbid the thought if somebody has already 
gotten sick, they have been fighting illness their entire life, they 
are trying to run their small business, and they show up to buy a new 
insurance policy, they have struggled mightily throughout my lifetime 
to get access to coverage.
  Now, in 1996, President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House, Newt 
Gingrich, right here on this very floor of the House, passed a bill 
that abolished preexisting conditions for every federally regulated 
plan. Those are the plans that the big companies use, like Coca-Cola, 
Home Depot, or Walmart. All of those plans, those big employer-based 
plans, the Federal Government abolished preexisting conditions in those 
plans decades ago.
  But States have moved a little bit slower. And the mechanism that 
many States are trying to use as high-risk pools to say that when folks 
find themselves ailing and trying to find insurance for the first time, 
perhaps they need a different kind of medical home, perhaps they need a 
different incentivize to get into the insurance pool. These high-risk 
pools are funded in order to make insurance available, accessible, and 
affordable for folks who have preexisting conditions and are outside 
the insurance pool today. We have got to get them on the inside. We 
provide money to do that.
  Personal tax credits, Mr. Speaker. Refundable, advanceable personal 
tax credits. What we say in this bill is, you don't have to pick a plan 
off of an ObamaCare exchange that isn't right for you and your family. 
You don't have to wait for the government to approve what your choices 
are. You can pick any plan, anywhere that serves your needs that you 
believe is best for your family. And if you are a middle-income or low-
income American, we will help you defray the cost of that insurance 
policy.
  Now, everybody has got skin in the game. There is no free lunch here, 
Mr. Speaker. Everybody has to have skin in the game. We are putting 
people in charge of their own choices. But if you are a 63-year-old 
couple and your kids have left the house, we ask: Do you need to buy a 
policy that covers maternity care? Is it important to you that you have 
a policy that covers pediatric care? Or, because you are in that older 
American status, you are in that age bracket where the actuaries say 
you are likely to consume six times more health care dollarwise than 
young people do should you be able to pick and choose those benefits so 
that you get the policy that provides the best value for you and your 
family. These personal tax credits go to the individual, so the 
individual can make choices about what is best for them.
  And it creates health savings accounts. Oh, Mr. Speaker, I did not 
understand the economics of health care until I got my first medical 
savings account. I thought health care costs $50 a visit, because that 
is what my copay was.
  When I got my first medical savings account, my insurer sent me a 
list. And they said: Rob, if you want to go to the doctor for a CT 
scan, you can go to this one down the road that charges $200, or you 
can go to this one down the road that charges $2,000. You just do 
whatever you think is best.
  I went and looked last night, Mr. Speaker. If you want to go in for a 
CT scan in Washington, D.C.--we have fabulous hospitals here--you can 
go to George Washington University right down the street here in Foggy 
Bottom, and if you have a United plan, the cost is going to be $1,500 
for your CT scan. If instead of driving west to George Washington 
University, you drive north to Howard University, you can go to Howard 
University hospital and get the same CT scan for $200.
  Mr. Speaker, I can't bring down health insurance costs unless I bring 
down healthcare costs. And I can't bring down healthcare costs unless 
we have transparency in healthcare pricing so that you and I and 300 
million Americans become more active consumers of these products. 
Health savings accounts give us that opportunity.
  But I can't solve all of our healthcare problems in one bill. And 
shame on this Congress for having created the expectations across a 
decade of stuffing giant bills through this body at one time, that we 
have come to set expectations that we can do everything for everybody 
in a single bill. We can't. And even if we could, we shouldn't. Taking 
issues one at a time leads to better legislating.
  So we have a three-phase approach here, Mr. Speaker.
  First, we are going to pass the American Health Care Act, which 
repeals the Affordable Care Act taxes and penalties, it replaces the 
mandates with policies that will stabilize markets and increase 
individual choices. We are going to do that tomorrow morning.
  Then comes the administrative action: What can we do through the 
White House?
  You will remember when they passed the Affordable Care Act, they 
delegated much of that authority to the Secretary of Health and Human 
Services. Today, that Secretary is my good friend from across the river 
in Georgia, Dr. Tom Price. So the second phase is for Dr. Tom Price to 
grab ahold of those dials that he has at Health and Human Services and 
make those changes that will encourage choice and lower prices, 
stabilize markets.
  And then third, we are going to come back to this body, back to this 
floor, back to the United States Senate and pass stand-alone 
legislation that authorizes association health plans, that promotes 
competition in insurance, that deals with the IPAB repeal, and on and 
on. In fact, we have begun that this week, Mr. Speaker.
  There are two legislative processes. There is the process where you 
can pass something in the Senate with 51 votes. That is called 
reconciliation. And there is the process where you have to deal with 
the filibuster in the Senate. That is for everything else.
  Mr. Speaker, right now, we are still getting the rust out of the 
gears here in this body. There are lots of new Members here. We have 
got a chance to pass a bill tomorrow morning that can move through the 
Senate with 51 votes. But then we are going to be back.
  Like I say, we have started this week. We have already passed, in a 
bipartisan way, legislation to increase competition in the insurance 
market and legislation to allow small businesses to band together so 
that they can provide better plans at lower costs to their 
constituents.
  Mr. Speaker, there is some suggestion that fixing a failing 
ObamaCare, an ObamaCare that is in a death spiral, is somehow a 
partisan issue. Again, as I began, I said there are folks on the 
Republican side who sometimes say nothing good ever happened in 
ObamaCare and folks on the Democratic side who sometimes say nothing 
bad ever happened.
  But the truth is, 20 different times, this Republican-controlled 
House passed bills that President Obama signed into law to fix problems 
in the Affordable Care Act--20 different times. One of the first bills 
I voted on when I came to Congress was one of those bills. The 
President signed it into law.
  The Affordable Care Act--I don't need to go through the whole history 
with you, Mr. Speaker. You remember. It was jammed through the Senate 
on Christmas Eve. It moved through the House on a Sunday night at 
midnight with no amendments and no changes. It was not ready for prime 
time. It needed these fixes. And even with these fixes, the death 
spiral continues.
  But we needn't say to one another that collaborating to solve a 
failing ObamaCare system is anathema to what anyone believes. We have 
done it not once, not twice, but 20 times during the Obama Presidency 
alone.
  Mr. Speaker, I will close with this tonight. It is a Kaiser Family 
Foundation study. They went to folks who have policies in the 
Affordable Care Act exchange system, and they said: Are you better off 
today than you were before the passage of the Affordable Care Act?
  Again, these are folks who have enrolled in the Affordable Care Act.
  What they found is it is about 50/50. It is just this small red and 
green sliver, Mr. Speaker, of the entire healthcare market in this 
country, just this small sliver that enrolled in the

[[Page 4743]]

Affordable Care Act. Again, almost twice as many people rejected the 
Affordable Care Act, are paying penalties to the IRS, and are staying 
out of the system as got into the system. But of those people who got 
into the system, about 80 percent of which are receiving Federal 
subsidies to stay in the system, only about half said that they are 
better off today than they were before.
  That is $1 trillion that we have spent--borrowed from our children 
and spent--to reform health care for 300 million Americans even though 
most Americans valued the plan they had, created a system where more 
Americans opted out and decided to pay a penalty than agreed to take 
the free health care that was being offered. And of those who agreed to 
take the health care, more than half of them believe things were better 
before.

                              {time}  2145

  Mr. Speaker, I will stipulate, if it is valuable, that folks who 
passed the Affordable Care Act before you and I got here were trying to 
do the best they could to serve their constituency the best they know 
how, but it didn't work. Insurers are leaving the plan. Families are 
losing their policies. Premiums are skyrocketing double and even triple 
digits annually.
  We can do better. We can do better, and we have an opportunity to 
start that process tomorrow. I regret that even the word ``ObamaCare'' 
has become so toxic that it divides people even upon its mention. But 
families are being caught in that divide. Families are being caught in 
the political crossfire as we discuss this.
  The President has said: Send me a bill because I want to put a stop 
to that uncertainty. I want to put a stop to that insecurity. I want to 
put the American healthcare system back on track.
  We can do it together tomorrow.
  America needs us to do it together tomorrow, and I hope that we will.
  Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for agreeing to be here with me during 
this time tonight, and thank you for agreeing to keep my friend Jon 
Richards in your prayers as you lay your head down this evening.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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