Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I have the utmost respect for the chairman of our Energy and Commerce Committee, but I have to respectfully disagree with almost everything he said.
I am glad that he is admitting that, basically, what this reconciliation tries to do is repeal the Affordable Care Act. There was some question about that by my colleagues until now. But, clearly, they are admitting that that is what they are trying to do.
Of course, they don't say anything about the positive impact of the Affordable Care Act and how many more people now have health insurance, how many people don't face discrimination, all the terrible things that existed before the Affordable Care Act became law.
What I do not appreciate, though, is my chairman saying that somehow we are trying to expand access to health care by providing more funds to community health centers. The fact of the matter is that the community health centers cannot make up for the work on women's health that Planned Parenthood centers take care of. To suggest that somehow that is going to make up for what Planned Parenthood does is simply not the case.
Mr. Speaker, this reconciliation legislation amounts to the futile 61st attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. It also represents the Republican's continued assault on women's right.
The reconciliation instructions defund Planned Parenthood, and the recently enacted legislation forming a new select subcommittee will continue a fraudulent investigation into Planned Parenthood, and I think that is appalling. This investigation and this effort in reconciliation are nothing more than a radical assault on women's health.
Extremist Republicans want to take away a woman's right to choose what is best for her and her family as well as her right to choose the healthcare provider that best meets her healthcare needs. This isn't just an attack on Planned Parenthood. This is an attack on all women across the country.
I am also disappointed that the reconciliation instructions would repeal the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which is part of the Affordable Care Act. There is nothing more important than the Prevention Fund. My colleague, the chairman of our committee, suggested it was a slush fund. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Less than 4 months ago the House voted overwhelmingly to support the 21st Century Cures Act, which was one of my chairman's goals, was to pass that bill. With that vote, we all agreed on the importance of making investments to spur innovation to develop new treatment and cures, investments that could reduce the human toll of disease and reduce the financial strain that disease places on public and private healthcare payers.
Just like we know that investments in developing new cures and treatments matter, we know that investments and prevention pay off. According to the Trust for America's Health, every dollar spent on community-based interventions generates a return of $5.60.
Not only does investing in prevention have economic benefits, such investments can potentially prevent the human suffering that results from disease. I don't see how anyone can be against that goal.
I would venture to say again out of respect to the chairman of my committee, if we were to get rid of the Prevention Fund, I don't see any point in having the 21st Century Cures Act because the money is similar. One goes for prevention, and the other goes also for prevention.
This legislation is harmful, unnecessary, and will never become law. I urge all Members to reject it.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
As I said, now our vice chair of the committee also is going into all the reasons why we should repeal the Affordable Care Act.
So I think maybe at this time, Mr. Chairman, I would like to just read, if I could, from the Statement of Administration Policy. This is the President's statement about why this bill should not pass. He says:
``The administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 3762. The House now has attempted to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act more than 50 times. By repealing numerous key elements of current law, H.R. 3762 would take away critical benefits and health care coverage from hard-working middle-class families. The bill also would remove policies that are expected to help slow the growth in health care costs and that have improved the quality of care patients receive. H.R. 3762 would increase the deficit in the long term and detract from the work that Congress could be doing to foster job creation and economic growth.''
The Affordable Care Act is working and is fully integrated into an improved American healthcare system. Discrimination based on preexisting conditions is a thing of the past. Under the Affordable Care Act, we have seen the slowest growth in healthcare prices in nearly 50 years benefiting all Americans.
Repealing key elements of the Affordable Care Act would result in millions of individuals remaining uninsured or losing the insurance they have today. An estimated 17.6 million Americans gained coverage as several of the Affordable Care Act's coverage provisions have taken effect, 15.3 million since the beginning of the first open enrollment in October 2013. This legislation would roll back coverage gains and would cost millions of hardworking middle class families the security of affordable health coverage they deserve.
Repealing the healthcare law would have implications far beyond these Americans who have or will gain insurance. More than 150 million Americans with employer-based insurance would be at risk of higher premiums and lower wages or losing their coverage altogether. Reforms that strengthen Medicare's long-term finances also would be repealed, likely making Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund insolvent earlier.
H.R. 3762 also would defund the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which was created to help prevent disease, detect it early, and manage conditions before they become severe; limit women's health care choices; and disproportionately impact low-income individuals.
Rather than refighting old political battles by once again voting to repeal basic protections that provide security for the middle class, Members of Congress should be working together to grow the economy, strengthen middle class families, and create new jobs.
If the President were presented with H.R. 3762, he would veto the bill.
This is an exercise in futility, this reconciliation act. To suggest that somehow we should repeal the Affordable Care Act after all the good things that it is doing to help Americans obtain health care, have access to health care, and lower costs, there is absolutely no justification for it. I thought that the Republicans would stop doing this months ago, but here they are at it again. I don't really understand it.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
I want to just talk, in closing, about the part of this reconciliation that eliminates funding for Planned Parenthood and related agencies.
Basically, the reconciliation instructions would prohibit Federal funding under Medicaid as well as under SCHIP--the children's health fund--and social services' block grants to prohibited entities that are defined as those primarily engaged in family planning, reproductive health services, and related medical care, and those that provide abortions beyond limited circumstances.
Now, the thing that is most disturbing to me is the ideological bent. We know that the Supreme Court says that abortion is legal and that women have a right to choose; but this goes way beyond even the abortion issue by talking about family planning and reproductive health services. My colleagues continue to say that there are alternatives to Planned Parenthood, but the reality is that there are not because it is the main provider for family planning, reproductive health services, and related medical care.
That is our point here. You can try to define this as relating to abortion, but the bottom line is that Planned Parenthood and similar entities provide all kinds of services for women's health and even for some men, and you are denying them access. So I do kind of resent the fact that there is this suggestion that you are going to allow access at community health centers, because I know, from my own experience, that community health centers are limited--there aren't that many--and they don't have the ability to provide these services, particularly this kind of specialty care that women deserve and that women should have.
Once again, we are here to defend longstanding freedom of choice protections that ensure that a woman in the Medicaid program can see the qualified provider she trusts. Remember, when you are talking about Medicaid in particular, you are talking about poor women. You are talking about vulnerable women who will lose access to care because Medicaid is their major source of funding if they want to get care.
I can never support any legislation of any kind that would leave millions of American women without key preventative health services, including birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, well-woman exams, and advice on family planning. Federal rules protect the right of Medicaid beneficiaries to seek care from trusted and medically qualified providers of their choosing.
Now you are entering an ideological debate into what we call ``any willing provider.'' The idea was that you could decide as a woman--or as anyone--where to go. If an agency provided the services and if it were qualified, you could choose to go there. Now you are breaking that for ideological reasons. My concern is: Where do we go next? We then say that you can't go to a hospital because it is Catholic or that you can't go to a clinic because it is Jewish. How are you supposed to define, ideologically, which provider you can go to if you now put the ideological bent on it as saying you can't go to a provider that may, at one of its clinics--not even the one you go to--provide abortion services?
This is a protection that has existed for a long time, and you are breaking it. This is the wrong bill--wrong because it repeals the Affordable Care Act, wrong because it denies women access to important care.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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