Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010 -- (Senate - December 17, 2009)

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the floor on behalf of over 10,000 constituents from my home State of Washington who have sent me letters and e-mails over the past 6 months to tell me their stories and their struggles with our health care system.

I come to the floor on behalf of the thousands who do not have the time or who do not have the resources to write to me and ask for help but who are struggling as well.

I come to the floor on behalf of small business owners, parents, senior citizens, and people with preexisting conditions, people with insurance whose premiums are skyrocketing, and people without insurance who spend their nights praying they do not have an accident or fall ill.

These people are all worried about keeping their jobs or making a mortgage payment and for whom the cost of getting sick today or being dropped from their health care plan or opening their mail to see another premium increase is too much to bear. Those are the people who deserve a real debate and a real plan, not distortions or silly distractions, such as conversations about how many pages are in this health care bill. What is more important than the number of pages in this health care bill is the help within those pages for businesses and families across this country.

I have watched, day after day, as our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have come down to this floor. They have made outrageous claims. They have handed out reams of paper and stacked copies of the Senate bill on top of copies of the House bill to try and turn a serious debate into a sideshow. But if my colleagues on the other side want to focus on pages, fine, let's focus on pages.

Beside me is a photo of a woman named Doreen Kelsey. In front of Doreen is a stack of papers. Those are hundreds upon hundreds of pages of forms and rejection letters and appeals and denials from her insurance company.

These are pages that have taken hours and hours to fill out and that have stood between Doreen's husband and the care he desperately needed.

I met Doreen at a roundtable I hosted in August in Spokane, WA, in my State. Doreen told me she is self-employed and isn't able to purchase her own health insurance because she has a preexisting condition. Now, luckily, she and her family have health insurance coverage through her husband Tony's employer. She told me she and Tony thought their family had good insurance coverage. But when he asked for a colonoscopy, they soon discovered the lengths to which insurance companies will go to deny, to delay, and to dispute the care families such as the Kelseys assumed were included in their coverage.

Their insurance carrier told them before they would pay for this preventive care, it would have to be approved by a primary care physician. After being delayed for more than a month because of that requirement--and this whole stack of papers here--the colonoscopy ultimately confirmed their fears, and he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. With that diagnosis in hand, the Kelseys were determined to beat this terrible disease together, but rather than focusing on fighting cancer they were forced to fight their insurance company.

Doreen told me although they had faithfully paid their premiums throughout their entire working lives, now that Tony desperately needed lifesaving treatment, he was in a constant struggle of paperwork with his insurance company to pay for even routine care. They weren't asking for anything new, they weren't asking for anything experimental, they were just asking for the care that a lifetime of paid premiums should have entitled them to.

The Kelseys assumed what most Americans do when they are paying for good health insurance. They assumed that while their insurance was expensive, it would be there for them when they needed it. Well, Doreen and her family, like many other American families and businesses, have come to find out that in our current health care insurance system, stability is sometimes nothing more than an illusion.

With each procedure and each battle, the Kelseys faced a new fight--more paperwork stacked on more paperwork, another appeal and another appeal. At one point, Doreen told me she had to appeal all the way to the State insurance regulator just to get a corrected explanation of benefits form--paperwork--from her insurance company. She told me they had to borrow thousands of dollars to pay doctors while their claims were tied up in what seemed like an endless appeal process--paperwork.

The Kelseys' insurance now costs more than their mortgage, and they are constantly worried that Tony's employer will drop that coverage. But, thankfully, she told me Tony is working hard and successfully battling his cancer. In the meantime, Doreen has successfully been battling her insurance company. But this isn't how our system should work. When we pass the Senate's health care reform bill we are debating, it will not be.

Let me tell everyone--and the Kelseys--how our bill will help them. First of all, our bill ends insurance company discrimination for preexisting conditions, so Doreen will be able to purchase insurance on her own and not have to rely on her husband's employer. Doreen would also have access to a number of different plans through an exchange that we are setting up where insurance companies, for the first time, would have to compete for her business. Our plan would inject competition into the insurance market, and we know that will lower costs and give families such as Doreen's more choices.

Our plan also makes it illegal for insurance companies to drop people when they get sick, so Doreen and Tony wouldn't have to worry about losing their coverage at the moment they need it the most. Since we know that preventive care is critical to saving lives and saving money on health care costs in the long term, our bill ensures free preventive services under all insurance plans.

Our plan invests in prevention and in public health to encourage innovations in health care that prevent illness and disease before they require more costly treatment. It would have allowed Tony to get a colonoscopy when he first needed it so he could get his treatment started sooner.

Mr. President, we also know families deserve the security and stability of knowing that if they or their loved one do get sick, they will not be forced into bankruptcy to pay for the cost. Our bill restricts the arbitrary limits that insurance companies currently place on the amount of coverage families receive. It caps the total amount that insurance companies can make people pay out of pocket on copays and deductibles. And it eliminates the lifetime limits insurance companies can impose on coverage.

In addition to putting in place those important consumer protections that would help people such as Doreen and Tony, it will give families the stability and security they deserve and lower the cost of care so Americans such as Tony and Doreen would not have coverage that costs as much or more than their mortgage. We do that by putting in place premium rate reviews to track increases and crack down on excessive insurance company overhead costs.

When our bill passes--and I am confident it will, despite the delay and the delay and the delay that we are seeing on the other side of the aisle--insurance companies will no longer be able to hike up Doreen's premiums to pay for a bureaucracy they will then put to work battling her claims.

We also provide sliding scale premium tax credits--tax credits--for families who still can't afford coverage, which would help 450,000 people in my home State of Washington get the coverage they need.

Mr. President, the bill before us today--which some of my colleagues have sitting on their desks and they bring out here on a daily basis to show us the pages--will help families such as the Kelseys. That is what is within the pages of the bill they keep throwing at us. So I think, rather than talking about the number of pages in the bill, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle might actually want to talk about what is in the bill because right now, instead of debating the merits of bringing down costs or protecting families from losing the coverage when they get sick, our colleagues are actually spending time complaining this bill has too many pages.

I ask the Presiding Officer and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to take a look at this photo of Doreen sitting next to hundreds and hundreds of pages of correspondence and appeals and fights with her insurance company. These are the pages we ought to be talking about. These are the pages that impact people's lives, and the Kelseys are the people we ought to be talking about.

So when my colleagues come down here and complain about the number of pages in our health reform bill--those pages that will help our families and businesses lower costs--I want them to think about the number of pages right here in front of Doreen. These are pages that have caused the Kelseys unimaginable heartache, and these are the pages that have come between them and the health care they paid for.

These are the numbers we ought to be focusing on--the 14,000 people who are losing coverage every day. These are the numbers we ought to be focusing on--the 51 million people who have no insurance. Those are the numbers we ought to be focusing on, not the number of pages in the bill.

Mr. President, we have to end the politics, end the delay and the partisanship. We need to end this obstruction because that is what the Kelseys faced every day, delay and obstruction. They are facing it again on the floor of the Senate. It is time for us to come together on this important bill and bring our businesses and our families the insurance reform they have been asking for. I hope that is what Americans will remember at the end of the day, that the pages in this bill are going to change their lives so they don't have to fight their insurance companies again.

Mr. President, we are here today in the Senate--nobody on the floor, just me talking about what we ought to be doing, and you in the Chair, waiting. Why? Because we have a Defense appropriations bill in front of the Senate. It is a Defense appropriations bill that needs to be passed by the end of this year. It needs to be passed so we can get back on the floor and pass our health care reform bill.

Some people on the other side of the aisle have decided that delaying this Defense bill will somehow help them delay this from ever being passed--the health care bill that would help Doreen and her family. Well, Mr. President, it isn't just about making a political point. What we are doing is having our soldiers--who are serving on the ground in Iraq, in Afghanistan, around the globe and here in our country--wonder what they are going to get for Christmas--a delay from the Senate?

The bill in front of us provides a 3.4-percent military pay increase. This is an All-Volunteer Force we have out there working for us. Many of them are away from their families this Christmas. They do not want to hear that the Senate is delaying passing this important bill that will give them the security they need because of political obstruction in order to delay a health care bill.

This Defense bill is critically important. It has very important support for our military and their families. It has passed through this Senate before, and we are ready now to make the final trip to the White House, which needs to be done, by the way, by tomorrow. So I hope our colleagues will not continue to delay. I hope they will allow us to move to final passage on this bill so our men and women who are serving us in the military and around the globe know there is a Senate who is working for them.

I have heard some of them on the other side complain that some things were added to the Senate Defense bill--that also need to be done by the end of the year, besides the Defense bill--such as making sure our families, whose benefits are running out for unemployment, or COBRA for health care insurance, get a 2-month extension. So should our Christmas present to them be: Sorry, you aren't going to get your small little help as we end this year. We want to keep that going for another 3 months during one of the worst economic times we have seen. So, of course, we put it in this bill.

Because of the obstruction on the other side, we can't get it through in a timely fashion. It has to be done by the end of this year. We are doing the right thing for our families. We are doing the right thing for our military by putting it in this bill and getting it done and to the President so we can finish our work.

Mr. President, these are all critical issues. We are all tired. We have been here day after day after day. It is time to get this done. Let me tell you why. Because Doreen and her husband are facing piles and piles of paperwork to care for her husband. They are fighting their insurance company. And all we have to do is put these bills in front of us, get them done, and provide some relief for America. I hope that is what we focus on, Mr. President. I hope we stop the deny and delay and obstruction that the Kelseys have had to fight with their insurance company. Let's move these bills and go home to our families for Christmas.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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