State Health Care Premium Reduction Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Speaker, I am grateful that we are finally having a discussion on the important issue of healthcare. More than a decade of healthcare conflict has squandered trillions of dollars, driven up our national debt, done relatively little to improve healthcare, and destroyed the public's confidence in either party's ability to fix the system. We can do better, yet we don't.

As an engineer, I learned that the first step to solving a problem is identifying and defining the problem. Our problem is not that we lack creative solutions to the issues that plague the healthcare system. Our problem is not that the electorate doesn't care about healthcare. They do. The need for healthcare is nonpartisan.

There are no Republican, Democrat, or Independent strains of cancer, forms of dementia, types of diabetes, or hospitals that check your political party registration when you arrive at the emergency room.

Our primary problem with fixing healthcare for America is that we have pushed and continue to push partisan solutions for a nonpartisan issue.

Have we in both parties not learned that this will not work? We both paid the price for our failures on healthcare, but the folks who have lost the most are our constituents, the American citizens that sent us here.

Let's be honest, face our past, learn from it, and craft a better healthcare future. The record is clear.

In 2008, the Democratic Party controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. You passed the Affordable Care Act on straight party lines. If it were the correct solution to America's healthcare problems, we wouldn't be here today with your bill to fix it.

Fast forward to 2017. My Republican Party had majorities in the House, the Senate, and controlled the Presidency. We failed to even get the American Healthcare Act on the President's desk.

Both of these attempts at solving healthcare failed, just like any other partisan attempt to solve healthcare will fail.

The issue is so partisan that both parties had to ultimately resort to the parliamentary gymnastics of budget reconciliation to have a prayer of getting a bill on President Obama's or President Trump's desk.

We know that budget reconciliation creates too many limits to implement the best solutions for healthcare policy. We know that you can pass whatever healthcare legislation you dream up with a simple majority here in the House.

We also know that partisan bill from the House will not get past the 60-vote cloture threshold in the Senate, much less get signed into law by the President of the opposing party.

Must we continue learning our lessons in Congress at the expense of the American citizenry? Let's work on healthcare legislation that can get a veto-proof vote in the House and 60 votes in the Senate, regardless of which party controls each Chamber.

Let's pass a healthcare bill that is too good for a President of either party not to sign into law.

After the Republican failure to pass the American Health Care Act in 2017, I called my staff together and told them, ``Even though we failed to pass a bill and moved on to the next issue, the problems with healthcare did not go away and we are not going to stop working on the issue.''

We decided to reverse engineer legislation with the final goal being something that everyone could agree upon, a bipartisan bill that covered preexisting conditions, insured more people, lowered cost, and gave Americans a fair shot at healthcare.

After 1\1/2\ years of hard work, the result was the Fair Care Act of 2019. After another year of work, scrutiny, and more good ideas, we are close to filing the Fair Care Act of 2020 with both a House and Senate version.

It has more than 50 bipartisan bills from the House and Senate in the language, and a few of the bipartisan bills from the 2019 bill have already been signed into law. We should follow this pattern.

Hopefully, you will be pleased to know that several of the provisions of your Affordable Care Enhancement Act can be found in the Fair Care Act. However, no one reached out to me for input on your bill.

I am reaching across the aisle and asking you to consider working with us in cosponsoring the Fair Care Act or other bills with bipartisan policy.

The American citizenry and I am tired of partisan healthcare in action. Will you please join us to change that?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source