Healthcare Affordability Crisis
Floor Speech
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, we have 4 legislative days left in 2025, 17 days total.
This is our last chance to prevent 22 million people from seeing their insurance premiums double or even triple and for some to see their health insurance premium spike beyond their ability to pay when the enhanced premium tax credits expire on December 31.
An estimated 5 million people will find that they can no longer afford those premiums and will lose their coverage altogether.
For the past month, the Congressional Black Caucus has told stories on this floor of our constituents who will be impacted by this body's failure to act. These include restaurant owners, beauticians, barbers, landscapers, florists, mediators, chiropractors, funeral directors, farmers, small business owners and their employees, gig workers, the self-employed, and more.
We have told stories of people worried about how they are going to pay that unexpected bill if they get sick or injured or if they lose their health insurance. We have 4 days to prevent that from happening.
Last week the Senate failed to act. The administration doesn't even seem to have a concept of a plan, so it is up to the House. Leader Jeffries has the discharge petition open right now to extend the credits, and we need just four Republicans to sign on.
Last week Punchbowl News reported that Speaker Johnson is planning a long process to fix healthcare, saying he anticipates working on healthcare through the second quarter of next year. However, open enrollment ends on January 15, 1 month from today, and those new premiums will take effect on January 1, in 17 days.
Mr. Speaker, do you know who can't wait for the Speaker's process?
It is my constituent Lester Johnson, co-owner, with his wife, of Mama J's Restaurant. They and their daughter rely on the Affordable Care Act paying about $700 a month for their premiums in 2025. However, without the enhanced premium tax credits, their bill is going to go up to more than $1,400 a month, and many of his roughly 40 employees are going to see their premiums spike, as well.
It is a lot of money for people, Lester said, and not knowing what the price is going to be because of a stalemate in Congress adds uncertainty. Everybody is feeling the anxiety.
Lester is not sure what he is going to do. I have told stories of constituents in Virginia who found a plan they could afford but with higher deductibles. They are worried. They say they are just going to wrap themselves in bubble wrap and hold their breath.
Bubble wrap doesn't help you, Mr. Speaker, if you are in a car accident. Bubble wrap doesn't help you, Mr. Speaker, when you get sick. Bubble wrap doesn't help you, Mr. Speaker, if you end up going into premature labor and have to pay an average of $70,000 a day for a NICU stay.
Rather than addressing this premium cliff, House Republicans have put forth a reckless plan that will put millions more Americans' healthcare coverage at risk. This new bill does nothing to lower costs for millions of Americans who are now facing skyrocketing healthcare premiums.
The bill is full of recycled failed ideas from previous efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. It fails to extend vital enhanced premium tax credits, forcing more than 22 million Americans to pay, on average, twice as much to buy the same health coverage they have today.
As I said, an estimated 4 to 5 million could become entirely uninsured, and everybody else will pay higher healthcare costs.
This proposal increases premiums for millions of Americans by funding cost-sharing reductions, causing hundreds of thousands of people to become uninsured. It expands so-called association health plans that put comprehensive and affordable care for small businesses and workers at risk. This has been the centerpiece of Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act for decades.
It doesn't work.
The plan also creates a backdoor ban on abortion and reproductive healthcare.
Republicans have shown they have no agenda to address healthcare affordability and access. As Americans stare down notices that their healthcare costs will increase by tens of thousands of dollars in just 2 weeks, Republicans are cramming through legislation that kicks them while they are down.
Americans will suffer without the Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits, and yet Republicans still haven't put forward a clean plan that will provide relief. Instead, they are putting on political theater with an unserious vote on an amendment that will undermine the ACA that their leadership intends to see fail.
This eleventh hour, half-baked plan isn't even feasible to implement. Earlier this year, Democrats urged Republicans to extend the tax credits fearing for those Americans whose costs were about to skyrocket. Instead, Republicans spent their time cutting $1 trillion from the healthcare system while Americans began receiving their notices that their healthcare premiums would skyrocket and Republicans stood idly by.
Now we are just 2 weeks away from the expiration of these tax credits, and this half-baked plan isn't going to cut it.
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Carter for his remarks.
Mr. Speaker, I wasn't here when the Affordable Care Act was passed. I was in the State legislature in Virginia. It was after I had become a mother. It was while I was part of the sandwich generation, trying to raise two children and deal with elderly parents nearing the end of their lives. It was while I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we were going to close the insurance gap so that no one would face a couple of scenarios that I was lucky enough to have health insurance to cover, but a lot of people don't.
The first was when my son was almost 3 years old, and in the blink of an eye he grabbed my curling iron and burned his hand. We were in a rural community in Virginia whose hospital didn't have a burn unit. It was very small. They couldn't even figure out what degree the burn was. This was on a Saturday.
They said: You can either go home--and on Wednesday there is a burn clinic where they can look at his hand for free--or we can see if the VCU Health center can admit him today. I said: Well, he is going to get admitted today because I knew I had health insurance, and whatever that bill was going to be, I didn't have to worry about it.
If I didn't have health insurance, I would have been forced to wait until Wednesday to go to the clinic, and his hand probably would have been infected.
After a 3-hour ambulance ride, a week in the burn unit, and all the medication, the bill was $15,000. In the blink of an eye, my son's injury cost $15,000. However, I was lucky because I had health insurance, so I only had to pay $1,000. I was lucky I had the ability to pay that.
At the time, we were trying to figure out should Virginia expand Medicaid to help people who can't afford health insurance get it. We were able to expand it on a bipartisan basis because in our rural areas, they understood Medicaid expansion was critical to keeping their hospitals open. Over 300,000 Virginians got health insurance because of that.
Now, those 300,000 Virginians face the prospect of losing their health insurance because of actions Congress took in July with the largest Medicaid cut in American history. In our rural areas, six hospitals in Virginia are at risk of closing because of those Medicaid cuts, one in my district that is a healthcare safety net. The closest hospital if they close is over an hour away.
We also created our own State-based healthcare exchange, and 573,000 Virginians signed up. Many of them now face the prospect they won't be able to afford their premiums when their tax credits expire in 17 days.
This is all in the context of folks seeing their housing costs increase, whether it is rent or mortgage, their energy bills increase, childcare increase. A lot of folks are facing the prospect that they cannot pay their rent and their health insurance, so they are playing the lottery, figuratively: The lottery that they won't get sick or the lottery they won't get injured. When they do, whether they are insured or not, they are showing up at the hospital, and the rest of us will pay the cost.
Mr. Speaker, as we enter the holiday season, as a preacher's kid, I have been thinking a lot about Matthew 25:31-40, where Jesus said: ``Come, you who are blessed by my Father.'' He said when He enters into his kingdom, all the nations will come, and He will say: `` `Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
``Then the righteous will answer him, `Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' '' When did we do this? And He said: ``Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me.''
Mr. Speaker, I came to Congress looking to do for the least of these as well as every American, but Congress' priorities this year have not been that.
Congress bent over backward, congressional Republicans specifically, bent over backward to provide permanent tax breaks for people who make over $500,000 a year, but if you make $64,000 a year, or a family of four that makes $129,000 a year, you are just expected to absorb health insurance premiums that double or triple.
If you make $21,597 a year, or a family of four who makes $44,000 to $45,000 a year, you are supposed to absorb your healthcare costs if you lose access to Medicaid. That is upside down, and what we are saying is to the least of these, you are on your own. They deserve better.
We have 4 days to try to prevent millions of Americans from losing access to health insurance. Are we going to do it? Time will tell. I still have hope, but we will see.
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