[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10376-10377]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HEALTHCARE LEGISLATION

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, yesterday my friend the majority leader 
announced he would be extending this work period by 2 weeks so the 
Republicans can have more time to finish their healthcare bill. With 
all due respect, time is not the issue. Two more weeks will not help 
Republicans fix this bill. Remember, the Republican leadership told 
everyone they would vote on the bill before July 4. Two weeks have gone 
by, and they don't seem any closer to having a bill that would actually 
improve healthcare in America. They seem even further away.
  When you have a rotten product, time is not on your side. The longer 
you wait, the more people know about it, the fewer people like it, the 
less popular it is, and the harder it is to pass it. I don't even have 
to tell my good friend the leader that. He knows it.
  I know why our colleagues are not so unhappy about what the leader 
said. We know why our Republican colleagues don't want to go home. They 
don't want to face the wrath of their constituents. If I were a 
Republican, I wouldn't want to go home either. I wouldn't want to face 
my constituents and try to defend this deeply unpopular and damaging 
bill.
  Now, the most significant change proposed to their legislation over 
the course of 2 weeks is an amendment by the junior Senator from Texas 
that would actually make the bill worse. By allowing insurers to sell 
cutrate plans that cover very few services, the Cruz amendment creates 
a very dangerous bait and switch. The bait is that the premiums would 
come down for a bit for some because insurance will not have to cover 
very much, and the switch is that deductibles and copays go way up to 
make up even more than the difference. Under the Cruz amendment, you 
could be paying a monthly premium for a healthcare insurance plan so 
threadbare, with a deductible so high that you will not get any 
benefit. For many, a Cruz policy could be worse than none at all. The 
Cruz policy leads to junk insurance, something nobody really wants, 
except maybe a few insurance companies.
  Ironically, the Cruz amendment would cause exactly the kind of death 
spiral my Republican friends keep talking about. A group of patient 
advocates, including the AARP, the Cancer Action Network, and the 
American Heart Association--these are hardly political groups; these 
are patient advocates--said that if the Cruz amendment passed, 
``younger and healthier individuals would be allowed to purchase non-
ACA compliant plans that have lower premiums but fewer benefits.''

       Without the younger, healthier people in the risk pool, the 
     premiums for ACA-compliant plans would rise quickly and 
     significantly. This same kind of risk pool segmentation 
     occurred prior to the enactment of the ACA when 35 states 
     operated high-risk pools . . . In that experience, most of 
     those states . . . were forced to limit enrollment, reduce 
     benefits, create waiting lists, and raise premiums and out-
     of-pocket costs to the point of unaffordability. Millions of 
     patients lacked access to care and treatment.

  That is not Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, talking. That is the 
AARP, the Cancer Action Network, and the American Heart Association. 
Again, those groups said about the Cruz plan that it would ``limit 
enrollment, reduce benefits, create waiting lists, and raise premiums 
and out-of-pocket costs to the point of unaffordability,'' because the 
Cruz plan is very similar to what we had before the ACA. Even the 
conservative American Action Forum said the Cruz amendment is ``the 
definition of a death spiral.'' Higher costs, less care, waiting lists, 
death spirals--that is the Cruz amendment in a nutshell. How many are 
going to vote for that?
  That is the most significant change Republicans came up with after an 
extra 2 weeks on the bill. Imagine, if they have another 2 weeks, what 
they will come up with.
  My friends on the other side of the aisle should have no illusions. 
They can't distract our attention from this bill by phony complaints 
over nominations or any other issue. More time is not going to solve 
their problem on healthcare. It is much deeper than that. The problem 
is the substance of the bill, which so cruelly exchanges healthcare for 
working Americans for a massive tax cut for the very wealthy.
  The idea is so backward that the American people have revolted 
against

[[Page 10377]]

this legislation. Even in the deeply conservative parts of my State, 
where I have met with my constituents, there is a revulsion to this 
bill. I am not surprised that some polls say that only 12 percent of 
Americans support it.
  There is no fixing a bill as broken as this one. There is no tweaking 
a bill as fundamentally flawed as this one. An amended bill that only 
kicks 15 or 17 or 20 million Americans off their insurance, though less 
than the last CBO estimate, would still be a moral travesty. An amended 
bill that gives a slightly smaller tax break to the wealthy while still 
cutting Medicaid to the bone would still be gravely worse than the 
status quo. The only answer for my Republican friends is simple: Start 
over. Abandon cuts to Medicaid, abandon tax breaks for the wealthy, and 
abandon this one-party approach.
  Democrats want to work with our Republican colleagues to actually 
improve our healthcare system, and, it turns out, that is what the 
American people want as well.
  The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 71 percent of Americans favor 
a bipartisan effort to improve our healthcare system, as opposed to the 
Republican's partisan effort. That is, again, that 71 percent favor a 
bipartisan effort--72 percent of Independents and even 46 percent of 
Trump supporters.
  When will my Republican colleagues start listening to the American 
people? Start over, drop this partisan process and this devastating 
bill, and work with us. We are willing to stay 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 
years to get a good healthcare bill for the American people, but we 
should be included in the process.

                          ____________________