Adopting the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 116th Congress
Floor Speech
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Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I thank--I call her the Secretary. She is one of my colleagues now. Congresswoman Shalala knows more about healthcare, and, I should say, probably is more of an expert on it than anybody else in this body.
I want to basically contradict what my Republican colleagues have been saying. They are saying that this is not about preexisting conditions. That is exactly what this debate is about.
We have seen the Republicans in the House, the President, consistently try to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. And what does that mean? That means sabotage to make it more difficult for people with preexisting conditions to get coverage. It means bringing out junk insurance that doesn't have good benefits. It means bringing back all the discriminatory practices that existed before the ACA, like lifetime or annual limits or rescissions.
You know, before the Affordable Care Act, you could actually buy a policy and the insurance company could come in and rescind the policy because they were spending too much money on your insurance policy. We worked very hard with the ACA to get rid of all these discriminatory practices. They would come back again if this lawsuit succeeds.
I don't think there should be any mistake. This lawsuit, brought by a group of Republican attorneys general, is nothing more than a continuation of Republican efforts to sabotage the healthcare of millions of Americans. Having failed to repeal the law through the legislative process, Republicans are attempting to invalidate the law through the Federal courts, and they have, at least for now, succeeded at the district court level.
Last month, Judge Reed O'Connor of the Northern District of Texas declared the entire ACA was invalid. His decision would eliminate the law's protections for preexisting conditions, as well as entirely unrelated provisions, such as the Medicaid expansion and the closing of the Medicare prescription drug donut hole.
This decision has been roundly criticized by legal scholars. Conservative scholars, like Jonathan Adler, joined with other scholars in writing that the decision was a mockery of the rule of law and basic principles of democracy. Judge O'Connor's decision is an exercise in raw judicial power. It is not the job of the Federal judges to strike down entire statutes without considering what Congress intended.
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