Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, in July, millions of Americans awoke from a months-long nightmare, as the Senate did the right thing and voted down multiple Republican proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The American people breathed a sigh of relief when the future of their healthcare and of their children's healthcare was safe for the time being.

Unfortunately, Republicans want us to go back to that nightmarish time by reigniting their proposal to threaten healthcare coverage for millions of Americans. While the bill the Republicans are supporting today may have a new name, it contains the same mean, devastating policies. It is a zombie bill that despite best efforts and against the will of the American people, will not die.

Like its TrumpCare predecessors, the Graham-Cassidy bill will result in less coverage and increased costs. It eliminates the built-in protections for Americans with preexisting conditions, causing many of them to see their premiums skyrocket just because of a diagnosis. Some experts estimated that an individual with diabetes could face a premium surcharge of $5,600 under Graham-Cassidy.

Graham-Cassidy will also allow States to decide what insurers have to cover and what they don't; meaning, once again, your ability to have comprehensive healthcare coverage would depend upon where you live.

This is not the type of healthcare reform people in this country want or need, and it is certainly not the type of reform to help us overcome our Nation's opioid use disorder epidemic.

With 91 Americans dying every day from an opioid overdose, we are clearly in the midst of our Nation's preeminent public health crisis. Over these last few months, we have heard time and time again that access to substance use disorder care is the linchpin to stemming the continually rising tide of opioid overdoses. Unfortunately, it appears our Republican colleagues have not been listening.

To be fair, access to treatment today is still a challenge. Only 1 in 10 people with substance use disorders receive treatment. Right now, an estimated 2 million people with an opioid addiction are not receiving any treatment for their disorder.

Yet the solution is not to block-grant funds which would otherwise be used to help people get care for their substance use disorders. The answer is also not kicking people off their insurance, but that is what my Republican colleagues are yet again proposing to do.

As with the previous versions of TrumpCare, Graham-Cassidy would threaten insurance coverage for 2.8 million Americans with a substance use disorder. It would end Medicaid expansion and cap the program, slashing its funding and decapitating access to lifesaving care. This bill would simply take a machete to Medicaid--the leading payer of behavioral healthcare services, including substance abuse treatment.

Also, in the same vein as earlier proposals, Graham-Cassidy would allow States to waive the essential health benefits the Patients' Bill of Rights put in place under the Affordable Care Act that ensures that every plan provides comprehensive coverage. Because covering mental health and substance use disorder treatment is expensive, this would likely be one of the first benefits to be cut. As a result, someone struggling with opioid use disorder would have to pay thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs, likely forcing many to forgo lifesaving substance use disorder care.

This epidemic of opioid abuse and overdose deaths will only get worse as long as we have a system that makes it easier to abuse drugs than to get help for substance use disorders. Graham-Cassidy would only exacerbate this already dire problem in our country.

Just last week, a leading sponsor of the bill said: ``We recognize there are circumstances where states that expanded Medicaid will have to really ratchet down their coverage.'' ``Rachet down,'' that is not improving healthcare. That is ripping insurance coverage away from the one in three Americans struggling with opioid use disorder who relies on Medicaid. That is gutting billions of dollars in addiction care and treatment.

Graham-Cassidy isn't a new block grant program, it is a chopping block program--for Medicaid, for coverage, for access to critical substance use disorder services.

I believe past is prologue here. Just as Americans rejected the inhumane and immoral TrumpCare of months past, they are already seeing this new attempt is more of the same and, in some cases, worse. Many patient, provider, and other healthcare groups have already come out against Graham-Cassidy, citing the bill's inability to maintain the healthcare coverage and consumer protections currently provided in the Affordable Care Act. It is deja vu.

Enough is enough. Republicans newest shortsighted stunt is detracting attention from bipartisan efforts to stabilize the individual insurance market and to help decrease costs. Let's end this partisan gambit to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and start focusing on ways to make the healthcare system in our country better, not worse.

We need all of you, in every corner of the country, to once again stand up and fight against these mean attempts to harm the health of our family members, our friends, and our neighbors. We need your energy, your commitment, and your passion to do what you did a few months back to help make sure our better angels once again will prevail. You have done it before, and I know you can do it again.

My Democratic colleagues and I will be fighting right here with you to finally put this zombie healthcare bill to rest.

This is the time. This Chamber will be the place where we have this debate within the next week on whether there is going to be a destruction of the Affordable Care Act, a destruction of the promise of access to healthcare for every American. The Republicans are coming back, once again, to try to destroy that promise.

The Republicans harbor an ancient animosity toward the goal of ensuring that there is, in fact, universal coverage for every single American; that it is a right and not a privilege. What they want to do is to leave these programs as debt-soaked relics of the promises that have been made to ensure that there is, in fact, coverage for every American.

So this is going to be the debate.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the great Senator from New York, used to say that when you do not want to help a program or to hurt a program, you engage in benign neglect--benign neglect. What the Republicans are doing is engaging in a program of designed neglect--of ensuring, after this designed program is put in place, that there is a reduction in coverage, that there are fewer people who get the help they need, that older people have to pay more, that fewer people get access, and that Planned Parenthood is defunded. It is all part of a program of designed neglect of the healthcare of all Americans.

This is a historic battle. It was not completed in July. Now, in the next 10 days, we must complete this fight and make sure they are not successful.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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