Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, the number one cause of personal bankruptcies in this country is the cost of health care. Most of those people are so-called ``insured.'' These are the policies that are being offered that people find out, when they get sick, that they really aren't insured.

A major goal of ObamaCare is to protect every consumer from the worst abuses of the private health insurance industry. Starting next year, no consumer can be denied coverage or charged more due to a preexisting condition. This means that 129 million Americans will no longer have to live in fear that they could, one day, be unable to obtain affordable coverage needed to maintain their health or even to save their lives.

The Upton bill would turn back the clock. The Upton bill would allow insurers to cherry-pick among all health care consumers--the young, the healthy--by offering non-ObamaCare-compliant policies, leaving only the old and sick to purchase coverage in the marketplace. This is something they have wanted to do and have been doing for decades. This is going to drive up premiums and allow just the type of discrimination that ObamaCare absolutely ends.

Speaker Boehner said yesterday, We have currently the best health care delivery system in the world.

Are you kidding me--with tens of millions of people uninsured and tens of millions more with bad policies that don't cover this?

Rather than taking steps to weaken ObamaCare, my Republican colleagues should be taking this opportunity to build on ObamaCare; as the President said, to fix it.

Last week, I spoke with the director of the Illinois Department of Insurance about some of the unreasonable rate increases my constituents have faced in the past and their concerns about the new rates being quoted in letters they received from their insurers this fall. He told me that he doesn't have the authority he wants in order to protect consumers from excessive premiums. This authority includes the ability to deny or to modify any unreasonable premium. Illinois isn't alone.

Today, Republicans denied us the opportunity to address this by refusing to consider legislation that would move us forward and provide rate modification authority in every State. Instead, they are choosing to move a bill that would drive up premium rates and undermine ObamaCare's new benefits and protections.

I want to caution people. Rather than re-up with some of the policies they have, check it out. What is really covered? Is there hospitalization? Is the emergency room covered? How many times can you go see your doctor? Go to the marketplace. It will be fixed. Pick a plan that is going to provide you with the real coverage and the essential benefits that you need that are provided under ObamaCare. We want to protect you from junk plans that are out there, but we want to let you re-up in plans that actually offer you the kind of coverage you want, that is essential, which is what the President did yesterday.

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