National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018

Floor Speech

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Madam President, I first thank the Democratic leader for his efforts to work and reach out to the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, as we move forward to try to take some sensible steps to improve our healthcare system, not try to blow up the entire healthcare system.

Just last month, the overwhelming majority of the American people sighed a great sigh of relief when this Senate voted down the earlier TrumpCare proposal that would have destroyed the Affordable Care Act and which would have had a devastating impact on the entire American healthcare system.

We all recall, at that point in time, Senator McCain gave a powerful and impassioned speech on this floor about the importance of the Senate going through the regular order, about working in a transparent way, in a bipartisan way, to improve and strengthen our healthcare system--not another cynical, partisan effort to ram through a piece of legislation that impacts hundreds of millions of our fellow Americans. For a time, it seemed we were making headway on that front. Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Patty Murray and the HELP Committee are working together, holding hearings, bringing people from all points of view in front of that committee to testify about how we can improve and strengthen our current system.

Now, instead of heading down that bipartisan path, we are seeing another last-ditch effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act and, in the process, wreak incredible damage to our entire healthcare system.
The latest incarnation of TrumpCare is the Graham-Cassidy legislation. Make no mistake, in many ways, this is far worse than the earlier proposals we have seen.

It would end the Medicaid expansion program, which in my State of Maryland actually has provided more affordable care to more Marylanders than the exchanges that were established under the Affordable Care Act.
It will dramatically cut the funds under the Medicaid Program through a block grant proposal that gives very little, given the huge responsibilities that the State has.

It will give a green light to States throughout the country to eliminate the really important patient protections, protections against discrimination based on preexisting conditions like diabetes or asthma or whatever it may be, and it will give a blank check to those who want to eliminate the important essential benefit provisions that provide important coverage guarantees for women's health and so many other important areas like mental health and substance abuse.

Doctors in this country take a very simple oath, the Hippocratic oath, which says: First, do no harm.

This piece of legislation--this latest incarnation of TrumpCare--will do devastating harm to our healthcare system, and you don't have to take my word for it. As more and more groups learn about this piece of legislation--and they are just looking at the details--they are beginning to phone into our offices and to send us emails and texts. I can assure you that Members will see the same outpouring of opposition to this bill that they saw to the earlier ones.

Already we have seen strong statements of opposition from the American Cancer Society, the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and the list goes on and on, and it just started.

It is important for us to remember that these are not Republican groups. They are not Democratic groups. They have no partisan affiliation at all. Their only interest is to protect patients in this country, and we should have the same interest in protecting the health of our constituents.

It is not just the patient advocacy groups that are already strongly opposed to this. Those who provide healthcare in our system to our loved ones--to our parents, to our children--are coming out strongly opposed to this already.

Here is what the Children's Hospital Association has to say about the
Graham-Cassidy provision:

Their legislation would slash funding for Medicaid, the nation's largest health care program for children, by one- third, reducing access and coverage for more than 30 million children in the program. Furthermore, the legislation weakens important consumer safeguards, and as a result, millions of children in working families would no longer be assured that their private insurance covers the most basic of services without annual and lifetime limits. . . .

And they go on. That is the Children's Hospital Association. Those are the hospitals that every day are caring for kids throughout this country, and they are not alone in already opposing this legislation.

The American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Nurses Association--in short, all of those organizations representing all those people out there who are providing healthcare to our fellow Americans, to our constituents--are opposed to this bill.

AARP, which, of course, represents millions--in fact, tens of millions--of older Americans is strongly opposed to this bill because, once again, it opens the door toward age discrimination in the amount of the premiums that are charged. Older Americans and elderly Americans will see their premiums go through the roof under this proposal, and that is why AARP is also strongly opposed.

So just when we thought we were at a point where we were going to focus on a bipartisan basis on improving our healthcare system, which has a whole lot of room for improvement, just when we began to see bipartisan hearings and legislation possibly emerge from the HELP Committee, we now see this last-ditch effort on the floor of the Senate to do what other bills had tried to do but in an even worse fashion.

We are hearing already from Americans--not with political hats on, not with Republican hats on or Democratic hats on or Independent hats on, not with political hats on at all, just people who care about the healthcare of the people of this country--and they are resoundingly opposed to this. So let's not try and ram something through here in the next 2 weeks to try to meet an artificial clock that has been set by the rules of the Senate. There has been ample time to debate this, and we have debated the earlier versions. Let's not allow this final sneak attack on the American healthcare system to get through this body. It would be a very sad day for the Senate.

I yield the floor.

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