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Repeal of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Floor Speech

Date: May 16, 2013
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Health Insurance

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Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the Patients' Rights Repeal Act. This is now number 37, the 37th time that we have debated this issue. We have now built up quite an archive of hysterical predictions by the Republicans during all these debates and 3 years of experience to see how those predictions have actually panned out.

Prediction number one, ObamaCare was going to kill Medicare Advantage plans. Has that happened? No. In 2013, this year, 14.5 million Americans have enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, up from last year, which was 12.8 million. And while the enrollment is up, the cost has stayed flat, even. The monthly premium, average monthly premium for Medicare Advantage this year versus last year, went up $1 a month.

Health savings accounts, the GOP said that ObamaCare would kill health savings accounts. This year, in 2013, health savings accounts have never been higher. 13.5 million Americans are in a health savings account, up from 11.4 million in January 2011. The President of the Health Savings Administrators was quoted recently as saying, ``You're going to see an explosion of health savings accounts assets.''

We have heard that it is going to kill jobs. We have already heard from Mr. Andrews 6.7 million new private sector jobs have been created since March of 2010, many of them, by the way, in health care--over 800,000.

But, lastly, all the predictions about busting the budget and creating higher new costs. We heard yesterday from the Congressional Budget Office that Medicare cost growth has been at the most moderate level since Medicare
was created in 1965. The index of per capita Medicare expenditure last month rose less than 1 percent, again, shattering records over the history of the Medicare program. And it is doing it the smart way, by greater oversight of fraud, by better coordination of care, by more preventive care such as giving seniors the prescription drugs that the Republican prescription drug program denied them back in 2003.

This program, like any program, can always be improved, and I have worked with Dr. Roe in terms of the IPAB repeal. Let's do that.

Let's stop wasting our time on a mindless repeal of measures that are working.

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