Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Ms. BALDWIN. I rise today to once again speak about the ongoing threat in the Trump administration to the healthcare and guaranteed protections that millions of American families depend upon. President Trump has tried to pass through the Congress repeal plans that would take people's healthcare away and allow insurance companies to discriminate against people with preexisting health conditions or refuse to serve them at all.
When that legislative repeal effort failed in 2017, instead of working in a bipartisan way to lower healthcare costs and improve access to care for all Americans, President Trump turned to another tactic--sabotaging our healthcare system--and there are more Americans uninsured today than there were when he took office.
The Trump administration has even gone to court. They have gone to court to support a lawsuit that would overturn the Affordable Care Act, including its provisions that protect people with preexisting health conditions from discrimination. Just think about that. He is asking a court to strike down healthcare protections for Americans. If he succeeds, insurance companies will once again be able to deny coverage or charge much higher premiums for the more than 130 million Americans who have some sort of preexisting health condition, including more than 2 million who live in the State of Wisconsin.
What is the President's plan to protect people with preexisting conditions? He doesn't have one. He never has. And I have to say that I doubt he ever will. In fact, this administration has expanded what I call junk insurance plans. These are insurance plans that can deny coverage to people with preexisting health conditions, and they don't have to cover basic and essential health services, like prescription drugs or emergency room visits or maternity care. Most of these junk plans don't cover those things.
When I spoke about this expansion of what I call junk insurance on the Senate floor 2 weeks ago, one of my Republican colleagues responded and claimed that these plans preserve preexisting conditions protections and essential health benefits. So today I wanted to clarify the record, and let's look at the fine print together.
One of the junk plans currently available in my home State of Wisconsin reads, ``This plan has a preexisting limitation provision that may prevent coverage from applying to medical conditions that existed prior to this plan's effective date.''
Another junk plan that is sold in Wisconsin states that the plan does not comply with the guaranteed essential benefits provided by the Affordable Care Act. To quote directly, the description reads: ``This coverage is not required to comply with certain federal market requirements for health insurance, principally those contained in the Affordable Care Act.'' The tiny fine print on this particular junk plan instructs individuals to check their coverage carefully to make sure they are ``aware of any exclusions or limitation regarding coverage of pre-existing conditions or health benefits (such as hospitalization, emergency services, maternity care, preventive care, prescription drugs, and mental health and substance use disorder services). Your certificate might also have lifetime and/or annual dollar limits on health benefits.''
The Affordable Care Act protects people against these insurance company abuses. Yet the expansion of these junk plans puts the power back in the hands of big insurance companies.
Let me be clear. American families do not want to go back to the days when health insurers could discriminate against people with preexisting health conditions, women, and seniors by denying them coverage or charging them higher premiums simply because they get sick.
As I have said in this Chamber many times, the people of Wisconsin want both parties in Congress to work together to make things better by making healthcare more affordable.
I have heard from several Wisconsinites who want to know why the President is working to repeal the Affordable Care Act and take away their protections by expanding these junk plans. They are frightened that if this sabotage of our health system continues, insurance companies will again be able to deny coverage or charge higher premiums for the more than 130 million Americans who have preexisting health conditions, again, including more than 2 million in my home State of Wisconsin.
I heard from Keri from Baraboo. Keri is a three-time cancer survivor--two breast cancer diagnoses and one melanoma. She experienced her first diagnosis at age 29. Now at age 61, Keri is able to get the healthcare she needs without being punished financially for having a preexisting condition. Keri is worried that if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, she could lose her health coverage or could be charged more because of her preexisting condition.
Another Wisconsinite, Keith in Brookfield, recently wrote in to my office about what healthcare means to him and his family. Keith and his son both have type 1 diabetes. Both of them have health insurance through the Affordable Care marketplace that allows them to afford the insulin, glucose test strips, and other medications they need. If the Affordable Care Act is repealed, Keith and his son likely would not even be eligible to purchase one of these junk insurance plans. They could be denied coverage entirely due to their preexisting condition.
We really need to act to stop this sabotage now. I want to protect the guaranteed healthcare protections that millions of Americans depend on. That is why I have introduced legislation, with my colleague, Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, to overturn the Trump administration's expansion of junk insurance plans, because we should be increasing access to affordable, high-quality healthcare options.
The entire Senate Democratic caucus supports this legislation, along with the two Independents who caucus with us. The Nation's top healthcare organizations, representing tens of thousands of the Nation's physicians, patients, medical students, and other health experts, support this legislation.
Anyone who says they support healthcare coverage for people with preexisting conditions should support this bill.
1556; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
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Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I am disappointed that my Republican colleagues have once again chosen to object to protecting people with preexisting conditions.
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Ms. BALDWIN. Senator, I would be happy to yield.
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Ms. BALDWIN. I would concur and say that the reason they have earned the nickname ``junk plans'' is because, frankly, some of them are hardly worth the paper they are written on.
First of all, they do not have to comply with some of the very important protections we included as part of the Affordable Care Act-- otherwise known as ObamaCare--especially to protect people who have been ill once before or have been injured once before, people who have a preexisting health condition, maybe a chronic condition that will require medical care throughout their lives.
In the old days, which apparently the Republican Senator wants to return to, there were all sorts of abuses, I would argue, that insurance companies could employ in order to limit their exposure, if you will. They had annual limits. They had lifetime limits. They had the capacity to drop somebody from coverage after an illness developed. They had the capacity to say: No, we are not going to offer you insurance. They certainly had the capacity to charge discriminatory premiums based on the preexisting condition. That causes great concern.
I just recently saw a report about how much a typical--put it this way: a woman with a breast cancer diagnosis who requires chemotherapy and radiation treatment and medication--how much she would be anticipated to spend out-of-pocket if she had a junk plan at the time that diagnosis was made. It was, on average, $40,000.
We also need to talk about another impact these junk plans have, and that is, if you think you have a really good chance of being healthy for the next year, and you decide ``This is a risk I can take,'' you are then fundamentally changing the structure of the marketplace for everyone else. You can anticipate that this is a choice healthier, maybe younger people will make, and it has a distorting impact on premiums in the marketplace. In fact, that is why these plans were curtailed under the previous administration. Now, this administration is greatly expanding these. They are no longer short term. They are long term, and a lot of harm will come.
I want to conclude and say that when we have an administration that first fought legislatively to repeal the Affordable Care Act and then acted administratively to undermine and sabotage the Affordable Care Act through all sorts of administrative Executive actions, including defunding the State navigators who helped people make wise selections for their insurance and also limiting the open enrollment period, and when we have an administration that has decided to go to court and asked the court to strike down a U.S. law in its entirety, we know there is sabotage going on.
I think the choice for the American people couldn't be clearer. We want to make things better, and the administration--enabled by some of my Senate Republican colleagues--is walking down a path that has led to 2 million people losing their health insurance and others at grave risk of losing it in the future.
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