State Health Care Premium Reduction Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, approaching July Fourth, we should be celebrating the greatness of our country. Instead, we are mired in a pandemic when we have more people infected and more deaths from this pandemic than any country in the entire world--with President Trump floundering and whining.

His approach to this pandemic--denial, delay, and ongoing deception-- has been exposed for the fraud that it is. And because of his multiple failures, now is a time when more Americans desperately need the opportunity to enroll in health insurance, not the junk insurance that he has been promoting. Instead, he seeks to eliminate--as do our Republican colleagues--the Affordable Care Act and the coverage that it has today for millions of our citizens.

Madam Speaker, today's bill offers a reaffirmation that the Affordable Care Act should be strengthened, not destroyed. Strengthening that would have been occurring long ago but for the fanatic decade of our Republican colleagues in trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Next year, however, we have to do much more for healthcare than simply to return where it should have been. Millions of Americans, particularly in a State like Texas, which has more uninsured children than any State in America, they are still likely to be excluded because of obstructionist Republican State leaders. And even those who have insurance, are still often the victims of prescription price gouging.

Madam Speaker, the exceedingly modest pharmaceutical provision in today's bill excludes the uninsured and falls well short of what is needed to prevent monopoly prices for drugs developed at taxpayer expense. This bill pours more billions into pharmaceutical development with no assurance that the prices or the resulting cures will be affordable. We see only today with the pricing of remdesivir, a drug that would have been left in the scrap heap of failures but for taxpayer funding, that the same taxpayers that developed the drugs will be charged billions to get them.

Let's look forward to a day when we have a competent and committed President to bring healthcare for all.

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