[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8638-8639]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HEALTHCARE LEGISLATION

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, often, upon returning from a week in my 
State when the Senate is out of session, I like to talk about some of 
the things I saw in Ohio. Much of that week I spent at roundtables at 
Akron Children's Hospital, in Cleveland, Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus, 
Toledo, and Youngstown--over the last couple of weeks but especially 
last week--talking about what Medicaid cuts would mean to my State. I 
throw in with Governor Kasich, the Republican Governor, who has 
admonished his colleagues--first in the House and now in the Senate--to 
not repeal the Affordable Care Act, to not throw, literally, 900,000 
people who have insurance in Ohio today off insurance, as the House 
bill would do. At the same time, one thing we also know is that the 
average 60-year-old in Ohio will see her premiums go up $1,600 a year.
  We all know the terrible problem opioid addiction has inflicted on 
hundreds of thousands of people in our country. Unfortunately, my State 
has had more opioid deaths pretty much every month--certainly, over the 
last year--than any State in the United States of America. Today 
200,000 Ohioans are getting opioid treatment who

[[Page 8639]]

are able to get that treatment because they have insurance under the 
Affordable Care Act.
  Think about the 26-year-old who is on her mother's health insurance 
plan who gets opioid treatment. Think about the family with the 5-year-
old with a preexisting condition who will no longer be able to get 
insurance and who gets insurance because of the Affordable Care Act, 
because we fixed the preexisting condition exclusion. If the House 
version were to pass, or something similar to it, that family would 
lose its insurance. There was example after example. That is one of the 
reasons the House of Representatives had so much trouble repealing the 
Affordable Care Act and one of the reasons that the 12 or 13 Senators 
are meeting--maybe tonight, for all I know; they never tell us--just 
down the hall, down there in Senator McConnell's office, to try to 
figure out how to repeal the Affordable Care Act and find a way to hold 
52 Republican Senators together.
  Think about that. They are meeting in secret. First, it was the House 
of Representatives, when they repealed the Affordable Care Act, when 
they voted on what is called the American Health Care Act. I think that 
is what they called it, the AHCA. When they voted on it, they came up 
with a bill at 8 o'clock at night. They sprung it on the floor the next 
day. Almost nobody had a chance to read it. There were no hearings, no 
discussions--not even reading the bill. They jammed it through by 
twisting arms--the President of the United States, the Vice President 
of the United States, who used to be a Member of the House, the Speaker 
of the House, all of them--to get this bill through. They hadn't even 
taken the time to hear from the Congressional Budget Office to tell how 
much this bill would cost and how many people would lose their 
insurance. It turns out they estimated that more than 20 million people 
would lose their insurance. That came after the vote in the House.
  They are doing the same thing in the Senate. They are doing this 
meeting behind closed doors. It is a bunch of Republican leaders 
together. No Democrats are invited. No Democrats are asked their 
opinions. It is all about doing something to live up to this campaign 
promise that they are going to repeal and replace the Affordable Care 
Act.
  Listen to Governor Kasich. They have no idea what they are going to 
do with these 20 million people, with 900,000 people in my State--
900,000 people who have health insurance, most of whom are working. 
These are people who have jobs. They just aren't lucky enough to have 
jobs like we have, where their health insurance is paid for.
  Think about the morality of this--200-plus Republican Members of 
Congress, all of whom get health insurance paid by taxpayers, by all of 
you in the Gallery and anybody watching this. We get insurance here 
paid for by taxpayers, and they are going to just snatch it away from 
those 200,000 families in my State who are getting opioid addiction 
treatment because of the Affordable Care Act. What is the morality of 
that?
  Then, worse than that is that they do it without reading the bill. 
They do it, pretty much, in the middle of the night, and they are doing 
the same thing here. Clearly, the American public is on to this. The 
public overwhelmingly thinks this is a bad idea.
  But they move forward because there is a huge tax break involved for 
the drug industry, a huge tax break for the medical device industry, 
and huge help for the insurance industry. That is why they do it, 
because in the end so much of what happens in this body is so that the 
wealthiest 1 or 2 or 5 percent get their tax cuts, get their tax 
breaks, and the middle class gets stuck with the bill and the middle 
class loses the benefits it gets. That is the moral outrage that so 
many Americans feel about this process.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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