[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 10810]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            DON'T REPEAL ACA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Connolly) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend who just spoke, 
if he wants to do something for Alzheimer's, don't pass the Senate 
Republican healthcare bill. It would devastate Medicaid and Alzheimer's 
victims who rely on Medicaid service.
  Ensuring that every American has access to high-quality and 
affordable healthcare is the most important and enduring challenge, 
arguably, facing our Nation today. Ironically, we are closer than ever 
before to achieving that goal.
  Since the Affordable Care Act was adopted, more than 20 million 
previously uninsured Americans have gained quality coverage. In fact, 
we have reduced the uninsured rate to the lowest level ever recorded. 
Americans no longer face punitive annual and lifetime limits, and they 
no longer have the fear of having their inadequate health insurance cut 
off if they dare get sick. Insurance companies can no longer refuse to 
cover Americans who suffer preexisting conditions, which is the case 
for tens of millions of Americans.
  The Affordable Care Act has been the difference between life and 
death for adults who have been locked out of the system for years, for 
sick children who have reached their lifetime limits before they can 
even leave the hospital where they were born, for families bankrupted 
by a cancer diagnosis, and for everyday Americans that will require 
expensive treatments for the rest of their lives due to a chronic 
illness or accident.
  The Republican effort to repeal this bill is a unilateral retreat 
from the progress made under the Affordable Care Act and from President 
Trump's own promise that there would be ``insurance for everybody.'' I 
guess there was a footnote: except for 23 million.
  This promise made by the President is not the only falsehood 
perpetrated by many of my friends on the other side of the aisle about 
the Affordable Care Act. Here are three more:
  Falsehood number one: Republicans say costs are out of control.
  The truth is, since the Affordable Care Act became law, healthcare 
costs have grown at the slowest rate in 50 years. That is right, the 
slowest rate in 50 years, and considerably below the decade preceding 
the adoption of the act. Republicans conveniently ignore the fact that, 
under their own repeal plan, their premiums would go up an average of 
64 percent.
  Falsehood number two: Republicans claim the Affordable Care Act is in 
a death spiral.
  Well, this would come as news to the Congressional Budget Office, 
Standard & Poor's, and the American Academy of Actuaries, all of whom 
have concluded that the Affordable Care Act's individual markets are 
stable and could continue to improve, except, of course, for 
Republicans talking it down.
  Falsehood number three: Republicans say that insurers are fleeing the 
markets and consumers will have no choice.
  The truth is the Affordable Care Act is not imploding, but 
Republicans have certainly tried to sow dysfunction and destroy the 
individual markets. In some places, they have succeeded. They have 
resorted to sabotaging the individual markets to fulfill their own 
false narrative. They killed the risk corridors that stabilized those 
markets and have used riders and must-pass spending bills to undermine 
premium stabilization programs.
  This has resulted in huge losses to some insurers, causing them to 
pull out of markets, understandably, and to increase premiums when they 
otherwise would not have. Ironically, the same premium stabilization 
programs that the Republicans have attacked since 2014 are actually in 
their own repeal bill.
  The Trump administration has refused to commit to making the cost-
sharing reduction payments that lower out-of-pocket costs for 
consumers. That has caused premiums to go up. Without those payments, 
Americans will see premiums increase by an average of 19 percent.

                              {time}  1030

  One Blue Cross Blue Shield executive noted the premium increases 
would be 8 percent if the cost-sharing reduction payments were 
guaranteed.
  Other insurers have explicitly stated that their participation is 
contingent on those payments. Threatening not to make those payments, 
of course, undermines the system.
  Those payments are not the only aspect of ObamaCare the Trump 
administration has sabotaged. They have also disrupted enrollment in 
individual markets by refusing to enforce the individual mandate, by 
cutting the open enrollment period in half, and by refusing to promote 
the enrollment itself on television.
  Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration have chosen 
sabotage and repeal over bipartisan cooperation to fix that which is 
not working. I would propose we work in a bipartisan fashion, and I 
have three ideas.
  First, introduce a public option to increase competition in 
marketplaces; second, we can implement premium stabilization programs 
in order to keep premiums affordable for everybody; and third, we can 
increase premium tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies to lower costs 
and boost enrollment for middle class Americans. That is the bipartisan 
solution to healthcare, not a reckless repeal effort that will deny 23 
million of our fellow Americans access to healthcare.

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