Breaking the Gridlock Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to point out before I get to my prepared remarks that Leader Jeffries just said that we need to fix our broken healthcare system. It is a healthcare system put into place by the Democrats. It is a healthcare system extended by the Democrats. The proposal today will do nothing to extend anything but the failures of the past. It will not fix the broken system they put in place.

Mr. Speaker, that is why I rise today in opposition to this Democratic discharge petition. It is fiscally irresponsible and fails to address the waste, fraud, and abuse of ObamaCare while ignoring the real problems in our healthcare system and ignoring the fact that these temporary COVID-era enhanced subsidies have done nothing but pad the profits of big insurance companies and drive up the very premiums that they purport to reduce.

Mr. Speaker, let's look at the facts more closely. First, ObamaCare has yet to deliver on the promises made to Americans over a decade ago. Since the ACA was enacted, premiums have increased by roughly 80 percent. Guess what. Ninety percent of that increase has been paid for by the taxpayers.

It is important to note that these premium tax credits are sent directly to insurance companies, not the taxpayers, and it is no secret why. The ACA was written by insurance companies to benefit insurance companies, and it has served to drive up the stock price for those insurance companies by more than 1,000 percent since the ACA came into existence.

Meanwhile, families face out-of-pocket costs exceeding $20,000 a year and a 95-percent increase in their premiums over that same time period. This is hardly a coincidence in a system designed to reward the insurers, not the patient.

Let's not forget that today's proposed extension of these pandemic- era tax credits only relates to the 7 percent of Americans who are actually enrolled in the ACA, not the other 93 percent of Americans who are not participants in the failed ACA exchange. Of those 7 percent, roughly one-half did not even use their coverage once last year. Yet, the Democrats want to pour more money into a failing ACA program at a cost of $400 billion.

Far too often, Mr. Speaker, taxpayers have been left paying the bill for a broken system that lacks proper guardrails and has been grossly mismanaged. The ACA is just another example of this, and we should not spend more money to prop up a failing program, certainly not a COVID- era, temporary program that they put in place and they, the Democrats, set to expire this year.

Waste, fraud, and abuse in this program cannot be ignored. My fellow colleagues have gone over that today in large measure, but today, Congress is being asked to pass a clean 3-year extension and to continue to prop up this madness and to prop up the waste, fraud, and abuse. This cannot stand. The Democratic-backed Big Insurance business model is clear: charge excessive premiums to get excessive profits, deny coverage to patients, and shift costs onto both patients and providers.

This has to end, and I urge my colleagues to oppose this measure.

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