SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act of 2014

Floor Speech

Ms. CLARKE of New York. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to oppose H.R. 4015, the SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act.

For years, I have worked with my colleagues, hospitals, and doctors to temporarily repair a permanent problem. We have continued placing a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. The Band-Aid doesn't work anymore. We need some serious treatment for this SGR wound. However, the suture we need is not H.R. 4015.

This bill is just another attempt by Republicans to undermine the law that is the Affordable Care Act. Their weak attempt at yet another delay of ACA's individual mandate will not be accepted by the American people. Millions of Americans are benefiting from ACA. They now have access to free preventative care; they are now no longer denial coverage due to preexisting conditions; and parents can now keep their children on their healthcare plan until age 26.

It is important to recognize that the bill, in its original form, stood as a bipartisan agreement. It was a permanent fix to the SGR problem. To have physicians paid based on merit, using a metric system to access doctors on the quality of care given not the quantity of patients seen, served to benefit the medical community and the patients in their care.

However, the Republicans have poisoned this bipartisan agreement making it impossible for me to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 4015. Specifically, they are delaying ACA's individual mandate for five years by changing the penalty for failing to purchase health insurance to zero (0) until 2019.

There is no argument that a SGR permanent fix is necessary. However, it should not, and will not, be at the expense of hard-working Americans who now have access to health care that they may not have had before the Affordable Care Act.

It is imperative that we continue to work in a bipartisan way to seek a solution to the SGR problem, because H.R. 4015--in its current form--is not the solution.

I ask my colleagues to join me in voting ``no'' on this bill.

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