Healthcare

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise to speak about some of our colleagues who are leaving the Senate. Before I do that, I want to address what happened late on the Friday night--I think 9 days before Christmas--when a Texas judge basically threw out the Affordable Care Act.

This latest decision comes more than 6 years after the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Roberts, already upheld the law's constitutionality. That opinion also found that parts of the law can be severed from the rest of the legislation. It comes after the administration has stated emphatically that it would not defend the law.

So, basically, instead of going in there and helping out to save healthcare for millions of Americans and protect them from being thrown off their insurance if they have preexisting conditions--instead of going into that burning building--the administration has said to basically stand down and throw lighter fluid on the fire. That is exactly what has happened. If this ruling takes effect, the consequences will be devastating.

To start, protections for people with preexisting conditions would be gone. About half of all Americans have preexisting conditions. This isn't just about rare diseases. This is also about asthma and diabetes. The ability to keep your kids on your insurance plans until they are 26 years old will be gone. The work we have done to close the Medicare doughnut hole coverage gap, which makes it easier for our seniors to afford pharmaceuticals and to lower prescription drug prices, will be gone. The provisions that help people to buy insurance on the healthcare exchanges will be gone. Minnesotans will see a loss of $364 million in premium tax credits, and, roughly, 272,000 people in my State will lose coverage.

We can't allow this to happen. The judge must issue a stay immediately until the appeals are completed so that these protections can stay in place and this decision can be overturned.

It is time to stop trying to start from scratch. The American people spoke in this last election across the country. Do they want improvements to the Affordable Care Act, like making pharmaceuticals less expensive and doing something about premiums? Yes, they do, but they don't want to start from scratch.

We have already seen what kind of healthcare proposals we get when we start from scratch--the ones that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have put forward. The legislation that we saw earlier this Congress would have hurt people by kicking millions off of Medicaid, by letting insurance companies charge people more when they get sick, and by jacking up healthcare costs. Every major group that you trust when it comes to your health--the largest groups of doctors, nurses, seniors, hospitals, people with cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease, and diabetes--has said it was the worst repeal bill yet. We cannot spend the next 2 years going backward and fighting old fights. We need to focus on building on the work we have done and strengthening and improving the Affordable Care Act.

I have always said that the Affordable Care Act was the beginning and not an end, and we all have heard from those on the frontlines; doctors, patients, seniors, and those working to combat the opioid epidemic say that repeal is not the way forward. We should now be governing from opportunity and not from chaos.

It means passing reinsurance programs, like the bipartisan legislation, which I am proud to cosponsor, that Senator Alexander and Senator Murray put forth, and using ideas that have worked in Minnesota and taking them out on a national basis.

It means doing something about skyrocketing pharmaceutical prices and passing my bill that has over 30 cosponsors to allow Medicare to negotiate for less expensive drugs under their Medicare part D-- literally lifting the ban that says that the 41 million seniors of this country shouldn't be allowed to get a better deal.

It means passing my bill with Senator Grassley, which we just improved upon today, to limit anti-competitive pay-for-delay deals, which delay more affordable generic drugs from getting out on the market.

It means allowing less expensive, safe drugs to come in from other countries so that we can have true competition. We could even put it to a trigger so that if there were not competition, then you could allow the safe drugs to be purchased from other countries, and I think that it would create a major incentive for drug prices to go down.

What we need to do is work together on the many bipartisan proposals that have been put forward to actually improve the Affordable Care Act, not throw it out and not throw people who have preexisting conditions off their insurance.

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