Medical Bills Are Too High
Floor Speech
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, today is December 1. At midnight and 30 days, at least 5 million Americans could lose access to their health insurance, and 22 million Americans who benefit from enhanced premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act--as they began open enrollment 1 month ago--started to see their health insurance premiums spike.
Last week, in honor of Prematurity Awareness Month, I stood on this floor to talk about how the Affordable Care Act expanded insurance to millions of Americans, how Medicaid expansion expanded insurance to millions of Americans, and how critically important that health insurance coverage is to a full-term birth with a nonfatal outcome for mother and child.
In the middle of the week, with several other mothers of preemies, I talked about my birth story.
Ten years ago, when I woke up one morning and my placenta ruptured and after almost bleeding to death, my daughter, Samantha, was born by emergency C-section. It was the scariest moment of my life. The hardest moment was the fact that I could not hold her, see her, or touch her for 24 hours, as she was in the NICU, and then the moment when I walked out of the hospital and had to leave her in the NICU for 6 more weeks.
I don't remember how much that NICU bill was because I was one of the lucky ones who had health insurance to cover that stay. On average, a NICU stay is $70,000 a day. That is more than a single person who qualifies for the enhanced premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act at the maximum rate of 400 percent of the Federal poverty line makes in a year. That person makes $62,600. The average NICU stay is $70,000.
I was lucky not only because I was able to take my daughter home 6 weeks later, but that entire 6 weeks I didn't have to worry about how I was going to pay that bill. All I had to worry about was her and my recovery. There are a lot of people that aren't that lucky.
There are a lot of people trying to decide right now whether to start a family. There are people right now who are in the process of starting a family who wonder if they will be able to afford their health insurance come January 1. They are having to make really tough decisions now, as they are in the middle of open enrollment, as to whether or not they can continue to afford health insurance.
Tonight, members of the Congressional Black Caucus will bring you stories from our constituents, from the States that we represent, of people who will be priced out of the insurance market, who will be one illness or accident away from economic devastation if Congress does not act to extend the enhanced premium tax credits beyond December 31.
Clarke), our chairwoman and the Representative from New York's Ninth District, to tell some stories.
Ms. CLARKE of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Virginia for her steadfast leadership and for hosting our Special Order hour this evening.
Mr. Speaker, good evening. I am Representative Yvette D. Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, proudly representing New York's Ninth Congressional District, located in Brooklyn, New York.
I thank my colleague, Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan, for anchoring this Congressional Black Caucus Special Order hour.
I rise tonight with my colleagues of the Congressional Black Caucus to bring awareness to the fast-approaching ACA tax credit funding deadline, 30 days to go, and to give voice to everyday Americans who will be harmed by the Republican-led healthcare crisis.
The enhanced ACA tax credits are set to expire on December 31 unless congressional Republicans join Democrats to extend them.
Without an extension of the ACA tax credits, tens of millions of individuals and families can expect to pay significantly higher health insurance premiums for marketplace plans.
Without these tax credits, Americans will see their healthcare costs skyrocket, increase by hundreds if not thousands of dollars per month, which will force families who are already struggling with the cost of living to face unaffordable premium spikes or lose coverage altogether.
The ACA tax credits have ensured that families, seniors, young adults, and workers in every CBC district could afford quality healthcare.
In our districts, we have heard from countless constituents who receive their healthcare on the ACA marketplace who are now worried about the cost of their healthcare going up.
One of my constituents, Lilah Wilson, a small business owner who depends on the ACA marketplace said: ``My heart dropped when I got an email earlier this month stating that I might lose my insurance benefits. I already struggle to afford the city that I have grown up in and contributed to as a small business owner.''
She continued: ``Shopping for health insurance through the marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act was the first time that I had assurance of affordable, good insurance. We must protect this program. It is a matter of survival.''
At every turn, Republicans have turned their backs on the American people. President Trump and congressional Republicans promised the American people that they would take swift action on day one to address our Nation's affordability crisis by lowering the high cost of living.
Well, instead, they unleashed the most aggressive assault on our Nation's healthcare in history, and the damage has been devastating.
Across the country, we are already seeing hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics that serve our communities closing their doors, and now Republicans' refusal to extend ACA premium tax credits is driving up costs and pushing coverage out of reach for many in our communities.
The CBC and House Democrats stood united for more than 40 days to prevent exactly this outcome while Republicans refused to negotiate and left working families to bear the consequences.
We are calling on our Republican colleagues to join us in putting the well-being of the American people above partisanship, to put people over politics.
This is not an abstract policy debate. It is about real lives. It is about parents deciding whether to fill a prescription or pay the rent. It is about seniors choosing between a doctor's visit and groceries. It is about young adults, gig workers, caregivers, and small business owners who depend on the ACA marketplace for the coverage that keeps them healthy and financially secure.
Let me be clear: Allowing these tax credits to expire is a choice. It is a choice of greed. It is a choice of cruelty. It is the wrong choice.
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank our chair for those remarks.
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his words.
To hear more stories from Georgia, I now yield to the Representative from Georgia's Seventh District, Congresswoman Lucy McBath.
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I will take a personal privilege to close this Special Order hour with some stories from Virginia, which I know you, Mr. Speaker, care a lot about. You and I served together in the State legislature there where we were able to find common ground across the aisle a little more easily than we are able to do in Congress.
In Virginia, about 350,000 people benefit from the Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, enhanced premium tax credits, 30,000 in my district, the Fourth Congressional District.
For a family of four that earns $129,800 a year, they are looking at premiums that will increase by $4,675. A family of four earning $64,000 a year will see their annual premiums increase $2,571. A 60-year-old couple earning $82,800 a year will see their annual premiums increase $11,968. That is a 174-percent increase. That is what Virginians are facing if we can't find common ground to solve this problem, even temporarily.
Our former colleagues in the General Assembly have predicted that at least 60,000 Virginians would end up canceling their insurance coverage due to affordability if they lose access to the enhanced premium tax credits.
Mr. Speaker, last week, Cardinal News--which covers the Southwest and Southside, Virginia, both of us represent portions of that part of the Commonwealth--told several stories.
There was one from Reagan Fisher Wyssbrod from Salem. Reagan and her husband, who is self-employed, have two children.
Wyssbrod works three part-time jobs to help support the family while keeping the flexibility needed for her children. She spends some days as a substitute teacher and as a business manager for a library association. She does some bookkeeping on the side. None of these jobs offer benefits.
She has a bachelor's degree in psychology, roughly two decades of experience in health insurance and accounting, and she is willing to take almost any job that will offer benefits, she said, even if that means working at McDonald's because she doesn't want to let her children go without healthcare.
Her projected monthly premium increase is $400, which would raise her monthly out-of-pocket costs to $1900. On top of that, her longtime doctor has moved out of network. It is astonishing, she said.
She spent 3 weeks combing through plans and eventually found one that would save the family about $100 a month, bringing their premium down to $1,800, allowing her to keep her doctor, but it has a higher deductible. She said the worst case scenario is her out-of-pocket costs would be $20,000 on top of the monthly premium.
Ultimately, it came down to: I don't go to the doctor that often, my kids don't go to the doctor that often, so we will just roll the dice.
She said: We will wrap some bubble wrap around us, I guess.
I don't think bubble wrap is going to help if they get in a car accident.
Victoria Cassels, an accountant in Roanoke, worries about her adult daughter who lives in Richmond, who is a self-employed graphic designer with an autoimmune disease. Her condition limits how much work she can take on, and she depends on marketplace coverage. Her monthly premium rose by $400, about three times higher than it was last year.
Cassels is going to do what she can to help her daughter cover the costs if she can't take on enough work to meet this new expense. Cassels prepares taxes for individuals and small businesses and says more of her younger clients are talking about dropping health insurance all together because they just can't afford it.
In the last few years, she has had a slew of clients in their twenties and thirties who have started their own businesses. Just getting started in life, they don't have the savings to afford the increasing cost of health insurance. Without health insurance, it is going to be very difficult for them to start a family.
Ben Pearman, financial adviser from Bent Mountain in Roanoke, runs his own business which is well established, and he has a steady income, but higher monthly costs have led him to reconsider his options.
As a single man in his fifties, he pays for his own health plan. Next year, his monthly premium will jump from $724 to $935. He can absorb the higher cost but is considering switching to concierge care, a model in which the patients pay a flat monthly fee, but that would leave him without insurance if an accident happens.
Linda Bartlett, 64, entered semi-retirement last year, and now works part time at Roanoke's Mast General Store. She turned to the marketplace until she qualifies for Medicare. Her premium is about to double, bringing her monthly payment to $1,200, which is nearly all of her Social Security check.
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to put this debate in a larger context. I was in the State legislature where the Affordable Care Act passed. It wasn't perfect. Our healthcare system has never been perfect, but what it did, between the marketplace and expanding Medicaid, is it got the number of uninsured to record lows, at least in Virginia. I can't speak to nationwide, but in Virginia, we saw our uninsured rate go to record lows.
We were able to expand Medicaid on a bipartisan basis because it didn't just benefit urban cores, but suburban centers and rural communities, rural communities that had high numbers of uninsured, that were worried about how their healthcare centers, their hospitals were going to have the volumes to stay open.
We expanded Medicaid. During the--I call it the big, ugly bill, we put millions of Americans at risk of losing their health insurance through cuts to Medicaid. We saw a list of over 300 hospitals in rural areas identified as being at risk of closing.
During the August recess, I traveled all over Virginia not just to talk to my constituents, but as one of only two members of the Energy and Commerce Committee to talk to a wide cross-section of Virginians. I visited a dental clinic in Abingdon. Eighty percent of their patients are covered by Medicaid, 80 percent. The other 20 percent are uninsured.
Before that clinic opened, that community got dental services once a year when a mobile dental clinic showed up, and the line was incredibly long to get one day of dental service a year.
When I visited this clinic, I didn't come in with any talking points. I just came to tour. I asked: What keeps you up at night? The director said: I don't know how we are going to keep our doors open with these Medicaid cuts.
Two TV stations were there who were there when the clinic opened because they understood what a big deal this clinic was, not just for Abingdon, but the entire southwest corner of the Commonwealth. My colleague who represents that area in response to that visit said: Democrats are just fear-mongering.
Well, lo and behold, less than a month later, three rural clinics closed, citing Medicaid cuts in H.R. 1. A hospital in Farmville closed its labor and delivery unit.
I ran for office because I grew up listening to my parents tell stories when they grew up in the segregated South during the Depression. They saw the best of government and they saw the worst of government.
Mr. Speaker, the best of government was when people came together to solve problems and to help people who were hurting through no fault of their own. These were people who were working day in and day out and couldn't afford to put food on the table. They couldn't afford healthcare when they got sick. They couldn't afford a roof over their heads.
The worst of government is when we sit here and focus more on: How can I score political points? How can I benefit the wealthiest 1 percent on the backs of every other working American?
As I traveled around Virginia in August and October, and in the 54 days that we weren't doing our job here in Washington--not having committee hearings and not voting on the House floor--what I heard was people losing faith that our government knows how to be at its best. We have to get back to that.
Our system is not perfect. That is why in the Constitution it says that our government was formed in order to form a more perfect Union. It is not a perfect union but a more perfect Union.
The beauty of our form of government is when we listen to the people and see that they are hurting, we have an opportunity to do something to stop that hurting, an opportunity to feed the hungry, house the homeless, care for the sick, welcome the stranger, and visit the incarcerated. When we do for the least of these, we are at our best.
We have gotten away from that, Mr. Speaker. We better get back to it because the American people are losing faith that this body, Congress, will do its job. We better do it. They are depending on us to. They have told us they are worried. We heard the stories tonight. This is just one thing people are worried about.
We need to get back to our better nature. We need to come together, find common ground, and help people who are wondering: Come January 1, how am I going to afford this health insurance? What am I going to do when my kid burns his hand and ends up in the burn unit with a bill of $15,000 that I can't afford to pay? What am I going to do if my baby is born prematurely and has to stay in the NICU at an average price of $70,000 a day?
People are wondering: Do we hear them, and are we going to act?
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