[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10763-10764]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HEALTHCARE LEGISLATION

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, after 2 weeks of delay, we have now 
seen the revised Republican TrumpCare bill. It appears that little has 
changed to the core of the bill.
  The Republican TrumpCare bill still slashes Medicaid. The cuts are 
every bit as draconian as they were in the previous version--a 
devastating blow to rural hospitals, to Americans in nursing homes, to 
those struggling with opioid addiction, and so many more. The 
Republican TrumpCare bill still allows insurers to charge older 
Americans five times or more than they charge younger Americans. 
Premiums for so many people aged 55 to 64 will go way up. Americans in 
their sixties could be paying tens of thousands of dollars more than 
they do today. The Republican TrumpCare bill still blocks funding to 
Planned Parenthood, limiting access to affordable healthcare for 
millions of women.
  So what is new in the bill? Well, it appears that Republicans have 
included a new $60 billion tax break on health savings accounts, which 
only benefits those wealthy enough to afford putting money into them. 
For Americans who are struggling to pay for insurance coverage, for the 
average family who sits down on a Friday evening and says: How are we 
going to pay our existing bills, and for middle-income families who 
struggle to make ends meet, a tax break on health savings accounts will 
not help. It will only help wealthier Americans, who sometimes use 
these accounts as tax shelters.
  It appears the Republican TrumpCare bill includes something like the 
Cruz amendment, which makes the overall bill even worse than before. 
The Cruz amendment causes costs to go up by letting insurers sell 
cutrate insurance policies with lower premiums but huge, huge 
deductibles and copays, so that out-of-pocket costs would actually go 
up, not down, even if premiums are lower.
  The Cruz amendment drives Americans with preexisting conditions into 
markets with unaffordable coverage. They virtually would have no 
coverage at all. Even Senator Chuck Grassley said the amendment would 
likely ``annihilate the pre-existing condition requirement.'' The Cruz 
amendment will likely cause death spirals in the insurance markets for 
Americans who need coverage the most. Even the conservative American 
Action Forum said the Cruz amendment is ``the definition of a death 
spiral.''
  From what we are seeing, the new Republican TrumpCare bill is every 
bit

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as mean as the old one, and, in one big way, it is even meaner, with 
the addition of something like the Cruz amendment.
  Moderate Republicans looking at this bill should be able to see that 
the incredibly modest changes to the tax provisions--the small pot of 
funding for opioid abuse treatment and these other tweaks around the 
edges--are like a drop in the bucket compared to what the bill does to 
Medicaid, to seniors, and to Americans with preexisting conditions. It 
is clear that the core of this bill will remain until the bitter end.
  So a vote on the motion to proceed will be a vote on the core of this 
bill. It is a vote on the idea that middle-class Americans and seniors 
should pay more for less healthcare. It is a vote on the idea that it 
should be harder for the neediest Americans to afford healthcare. It is 
a vote on the idea that corporations and special interests deserve 
another tax break.
  If you are for that idea, vote yes on the motion to proceed. But my 
Republican friends should not be tempted by the promise of amendments 
to fix this bill. It is clear that the Republican leadership wants and 
needs to keep the core of this bill--a dagger to the heart of Medicaid 
and tax giveaways for corporations and special interests--to the bitter 
end.
  Republicans keep talking about needing to change the status quo on 
healthcare, but you don't change the status quo to make it worse. That 
is what this bill would do. This is far, far worse than the status quo. 
We, Republicans and Democrats, can work together to actually improve 
our healthcare system, to stabilize the marketplaces, and to reduce the 
costs that average Americans pay for their healthcare, particularly for 
prescription drugs.
  We can do it, but my Republican friends need to abandon this 
wrongheaded, partisan, behind-closed-doors approach, and they ought to 
do it on the motion to proceed next week.

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