State Health Care Premium Reduction Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his tremendous leadership in bringing this important and historic legislation to the floor. He has been a part of advancing lower costs for healthcare and better benefits for all Americans in his career in Congress. I thank Mr. Scott for his tremendous leadership as chair of the Education and Labor Committee and for the opportunity he is giving us today. I salute the gentleman and Chairman Pallone, the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, who has played such an important role in all of this, as well as Mr. Richard Neal, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, so much an important part. These three committees of jurisdiction and the members of their committees have been so essential to its excellence and to its success.

I also salute our freshmen who have been leading the charge to lower healthcare costs and strengthen healthcare protections every step of the way from the first day they arrived in the Congress.

In the election of this past 2018, Democrats made a pledge to the American people. For the people we would do three things. For the people we would lower the cost of healthcare by lowering the cost of prescription drugs and preserving the preexisting medical condition. We are doing that today.

For the people we would not only lower healthcare costs, we had bigger paychecks by building the infrastructure of America in a green way with good paying jobs. We will be doing that the rest of the week.

For the people we would be having cleaner government, and that is what we did the end of last week with the Justice in Policing Act, as well as part of our H.R. 1, voting for statehood for the District of Columbia. There is certainly more to come on the cleaner government front as we fight for voting at home and removing obstacles to participation.

But here today we are focused on that first for the people priority. Access to affordable care is a matter of life and death. That is so self-evident as we see every day during the COVID-19 crisis which now has killed more than 125,000 Americans, infected over 2.5 million Americans, and left tens of millions of people without jobs.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: ``Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and most inhuman because it often results in physical death.'' Yes. As lives and livelihoods are shattered by the coronavirus, the protections of the Affordable Care Act are more important now than ever, and this is a health justice issue.

Democrats with this bill will strengthen America's health and financial security during this time of crisis and for years to come. It lowers Americans' healthcare coverage costs: Significantly increasing the Affordable Care Act's affordability subsidies to be more generous and cover more middle class families. It negotiates lower prescription drug prices: Drawing from our H.R. 3 legislation to ensure that Americans no longer have to pay more for our medicines than Big Pharma charges for the same drugs overseas.

This has been a long-term goal of Democrats in the Congress. In 2006 when we were running and won the majority, our For the People equivalent agenda was a new direction for America, Six for '06, and we had six bills that we said we would pass immediately upon obtaining the majority. We passed all six of them in the House of Representatives. Five of them became law. Only one of them did not, the law enabling the Secretary of HHS to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. This has been a fight over the years we continue to make because it is central to not only the health but the financial health security of America's working families.

In addition, this legislation expands coverage and pushes holdout States to adopt Medicaid expansion for the 4.8 million cruelly excluded from the coverage.

It combats inequity in health coverage faced by communities of color, expands more affordable coverage to vulnerable populations, and fights the maternal mortality epidemic.

And it cracks down on junk plans which are such a rip--let me just pay you all the time for my health insurance but you won't be there for me when I need care. So it cracks down on those junk plans and strengthens protections for people with preexisting conditions.

What is interesting in this whole debate is to hear the President and Members on the other side of the side say that, oh, they are all for protecting preexisting conditions.

Oh, really?

Then why are you in the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn them?

Now, just back to this bill. According to analysis from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, our legislation that we have on the floor today will help lower the costs for well over 17 million more Americans and safeguard the Affordable Care Act's lifesaving protections for 130 million Americans with preexisting conditions.

When they say they are for allowing people with preexisting conditions to get coverage, they don't say at what cost. This is one of the biggest differences--well, with stiff competition--but one of the biggest differences between Democrats and Republicans on healthcare for Americans. We guarantee affordability and protect the preexisting medical condition as not being an obstacle to access. They are in Court trying to overturn it.

Sadly--and this is a stark contrast, as I point out--as Democrats unveiled our lifesaving legislation last week, President Trump went to the Court doubling down on his lawsuit to tear down the ACA and dismantle every one of its protections, including the preexisting medical condition benefit. At a time when families need healthcare more than ever, the President is trying to strip protections from about 130 million Americans with preexisting conditions and take coverage away from 23 million Americans. That does not even go into what he is trying to do to the enhanced benefits that all Americans with healthcare enjoy.

We need to build on the progress of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to lower health costs and prescription drug prices, not rip away American healthcare in the middle of a pandemic.

What sense does that make?

On day one of this Congress led by Representative Colin Allred, the House voted to throw our full legal weight into defending this lawsuit. Yet more than 190 Republicans have voted against that resolution, choosing to be fully complicit in the President's attempt to tear away health protections. We continue to call on the President to abandon his lawsuit to destroy the Affordable Care Act and urge him instead to call on the 14 States who have refused to expand Medicaid to do so.

Doesn't it just make sense at the time of a pandemic? It is always important.

It would have been amusing if this were not so deadly serious to hear Senator Cornyn say: Well, these people who have lost their jobs because of this pandemic could always sign up for the Affordable Care Act.

Really?

But he is trying to take it down.

The administration has a responsibility to defend the law of the land, not to tear it down. Today, Members of Congress have a choice to strengthen America's healthcare protections and lower healthcare costs or to be complicit--once again, I use that word--in President Trump's campaign to dismantle families' healthcare. Make no mistake. A vote against this bill is a vote to weaken America's health and financial security during a pandemic.

When I was growing up, I remember my mother used to always say: If you don't have your health, you don't have anything.

Health is so central. As you see, the American people place a high value on it when they say they don't want to go out too soon to jeopardize their health or the health of those they have at home.

So, in every language when people salute each other they salute people to their health. The Spanish say salud, the Dutch say proost, the French say sante, the Germans say prost, the Irish say--now, this is hard because Gaelic is a hard language--slainte, the Italian I can say better, salute, and in Hebrew it is l'chaim.

It is all about life and health. That is the salute. Everybody knows it is centrally important. With this bill Democrats in the House are offering our salute to good health to the American people, and we hope the Republicans will join us in that salute to good health to the American people.

Madam Speaker, I urge a strong vote for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act for the people, for the children, and for the future.

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