Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4414, Expatriate Health Coverage Clarification Act of 2014

Floor Speech

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 555 provides for the consideration to fix yet another flaw that has to be corrected in the Affordable Care Act due to the rushed process by which the bill was passed in March of 2010.

As a direct result of the hasty legislation, experts have estimated that over 1,000 Americans will lose their jobs unless Congress takes immediate action to correct and clarify the Affordable Care Act's impact on expatriate health care plans.

This bill before us today will do just that, putting Americans above partisan politics and helping yet another subset of people in our country who currently are being harmed by the President's takeover of our health care system.

The rule before us today provides for one full hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member on the Committee on Ways and Means. Further, the rule provides for the adoption of an amendment by the bill's authors, Representatives NUNES from California and CARNEY from Delaware, which addresses a number of concerns the minority expressed during debate of this legislation several weeks ago.

True to the Speaker's commitment of letting the House work its will, Republicans listened to those concerns and crafted a bipartisan amendment to improve the legislation. In addition, the rule provides the minority the standard motion to recommit.

H.R. 4414, the Expatriate Health Coverage Clarification Act of 2014, addresses the problem caused by the Affordable Care Act, which could result in those Americans who live abroad for a substantial portion of the year, those individuals referred to as expatriates, that could cause them to lose their health care coverage because of the one-size-fits-all approach to our health care system, which was employed by the wizards who wrote the Affordable Care Act.

Expatriate health care providers have traditionally offered tailored, specialized insurance plans to meet the needs of Americans who spend their time overseas. These citizens simply cannot rely on a local general practitioner or neighborhood clinic because, so often, they are far away from home.

However, the Affordable Care Act does not provide an avenue by which these plans can continue to be offered. Instead, Senator Reid, Kathleen Sebelius, and Barack Obama decided it was up to them to decide how Americans' health insurance plans should be structured.

The legislation before us today is a clear example of why a top-down Federal approach to health care does not work. Consumers should be in the driver's seat deciding what works best for them, what works best for themselves and their families, not someone sitting in Washington, D.C.

Because of the regulations in the Affordable Care Act, insurers have announced that they will have to shift their expatriate operations overseas in order to be in compliance with the law, and with those operations will go those jobs. All Americans know that it was shown to be an empty promise when someone said, if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.

Well, Mr. Speaker, it is a darn good thing the President never promised, if you like your job, you can keep it. Over a thousand jobs tied to expatriate health care operations will now be shipped overseas. Americans who rely on these health plans, which until now have worked well for them and their families, are going to have to scramble and scramble fast to find alternative coverage.

Some examples of those Americans who will potentially lose their health care coverage due to the unyielding regulations of the Affordable Care Act include businessmen and businesswomen, pilots, foreign aid workers, ship operators, and tour guides.

The President has already acknowledged that his law will hurt these Americans, announcing that the Department of Health and Human Services would, yet again, ignore the law and provide a temporary waiver from complying with the law's requirements; but this is not how you fix flawed legislation.

You involve the legislative branch. You come to Congress, and you ask that you legislate and fix the problem in the law.

Now, the White House, where there is a so-called constitutional scholar, the President seems to have only read article II of the Constitution, skipping entirely over the first and longest article, article I, where the Founders make the case that Congress is the body where laws are passed, the body where laws are written, the body where laws are amended. As a result of the President making this change unilaterally, the relief is only temporary.

The bill before us today provides the long-term security, the security that is required to give these affected Americans and their families the certainty they need to make decisions for their futures. These expatriate plans are not barebone plans that some in this body have criticized.

This is not lousy insurance. They typically are robust plans. They are comprehensive plans, which simply cater to the special needs of Americans who travel and are gone for a good portion of the year.

The amendment by Representatives Nunes and Carney, which is adopted in the rule before us, takes a thoughtful piece of legislation and improves it even further. It clarifies that any future plans offered to expatriates must still comply with the actuarial requirements in the Affordable Care Act, as well as any pre-Affordable Care Act laws, including the Employee Retirement Income and Security Act, known as ERISA, and the Public Health Service Act. Moreover, it narrowly tailors this relief to those Americans who spend more than 180 days outside the country. These were concerns that Democrats expressed during the previous debate on this legislation, and they are fully addressed in the legislation before us today.

This is a carefully crafted fix. It was necessary because the underlying law was so poorly crafted. It is needed to help Americans who are being directly harmed by the President's health care law.

I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the rule and ``yes'' on the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McGOVERN. I voted for the Affordable Care Act, I support the Affordable Care Act, and I believe in the Affordable Care Act. I believe every person in this country ought to have health care. I don't think that is a radical idea, but my friends on the other side of the aisle apparently do. I think everybody in this country is entitled to good, quality health insurance. I think when they get sick they ought to know they will be taken care of and not have to worry about whether they are going to get covered or not because of preexisting conditions or whether they are going to meet some sort of lifetime cap and be excluded from coverage.

That is what the Affordable Care Act is all about. That is what this big controversy that my friends on the other side of the aisle have decided to make on this issue is all about. So I am making sure that everybody in this country has health care. Boy, what a radical idea, what a radical idea.

I will also say that having supported the Affordable Care Act, it is not a perfect piece of legislation. I have never seen a perfect piece of legislation ever come out of Congress. Legislation, especially legislation that covers a subject as wide as this, at times will be tweaked. There will be unintended consequences that we will come and we will try to fix. That is what legislation is supposed to do: to try to fix the problems.

Democrats have said that from the beginning, that we want to make this bill work, work as well as it possibly can. We said we would be willing to work with Republicans and the administration to address the problems that have come about as a result of the implementation of this law. By no means does that mean that we should repeal the Affordable Care Act, which is something my Republican friends are obsessed with. To the contrary, we need to do everything we can to fix any challenges that this law may have to make sure that every American gets the benefit of the Affordable Care Act.

H.R. 4414, the Expatriate Health Coverage Clarification Act, is trying to fix one problem with the law. My friend from Delaware (Mr. Carney) and others are attempting to try to fix a provision in the law that causes some problems with the ways that expatriates are treated under the ACA.

This is one example of how we--Democrats and Republicans--should be able to work together. This is one example of how we--supporters and opponents of the ACA--should be able to lay those differences aside as we try to find solutions and move our country forward.

It is my understanding, Mr. Speaker, that House and Senate Democrats and Republicans have been working with the White House to come up with a solution that can pass both Houses of Congress and be signed by the President. It is also my understanding that discussions were ongoing as late as yesterday afternoon when the House majority decided to go with the version before us today instead of waiting to continue negotiations in a bipartisan, bicameral way so that we can get a bill moved expeditiously through both Houses and signed into law by the President of the United States.

I am more than a little disappointed, Mr. Speaker, because I want to work with the majority to fix this problem. I am concerned that this bill, the bill before us that we are talking about right now, creates other problems, namely excluding green card holders and nonimmigrant workers from most of the coverage protections provided by the ACA. I am disappointed that this process was closed down even though negotiations were still ongoing.

Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Texas literally took my breath away when he talked about that this represents the Speaker's pledge to let the House work its will. This issue first came up under a suspension, which was totally closed, and it is coming to the floor today under a closed rule. Those of us who have some ideas on how we might be able to make this more palatable to address some of the concerns that we have will not have that opportunity. They have closed the process down. I hardly think that that can be described as an open process or as a transparent process. This is yet another closed rule, another closed rule.

Mr. Speaker, this process was flawed and this process could have been better. There are many of us on my side of the aisle who believe that we need to fix this flaw that the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Carney) has brought to our attention, but we need to do it in the right way, and this is not the right way to do it.

I think what is going to happen here is--my friends on the other side of the aisle control most of the votes here so they will probably pass this bill--but what will happen then is that the Senate will then have negotiations with the White House and try to figure out how to fix this problem. They will pass it, then it will have to come back to the House again, and then we will have to deal with it separately.

I regret very much that my friends have decided to go this way. If they had waited a few more days we probably could have gotten a solution to this that could have received unanimous support. Instead, we are back at the same old-same old, where it is attack the ACA, attack the ACA, and pretend to try to fix it by addressing a legitimate concern, but adding to that a whole bunch of extraneous stuff that creates other problems.

I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule and to vote ``no'' on the bill. Let's wait until the Senate gets it right with the White House and we can revisit this issue.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

This bill was brought to the floor under suspension of the rules prior to the Easter recess. So it has been available for consideration, for staff work to occur, for some period of time. The fact of the matter is that it is an imminent problem facing people who are working outside of the country, and for that reason it was important to get it solved.

If the gentleman feels that more work should have been done prior to that time, perhaps they should have worked with the majority prior to it being brought up under suspension. I don't know the answer to that. But I do know where we are today is that this is a problem that needs to be fixed, and the Republican majority is seeing to it that it is fixed, bringing it to the floor under a rule. The minority will have an opportunity to amend during a motion to recommit, and I certainly look forward to a lively discussion during that time.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

What we are considering right now before the full House is very clear.

One, a closed rule. What a closed rule means is that you can't offer any amendments. So some of the concerns that have been raised about the underlying bill we can't fix. For the life of me, I don't understand why, if the gentleman claims that the Republican majority is committed to an open, transparent process where the House can work its will, I don't understand why you would approve a closed rule on this.

Let's be honest about this. It is not like my friends on the other side of the aisle are doing anything else. We have had multiple repeals of the Affordable Care Act before us. We have had lots of message issues that their pollsters say poll well, but the Republican majority hasn't really done very much to help the American people in any way, shape, or form. So it is not like the time doesn't exist to maybe have a little bit more debate on an issue like this and be able to perfect this bill. This is a closed rule. This is a closed rule, this is a closed process, and this has become a closed House.

Again, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this closed rule, reject this closed process, reject the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

This, this was brought to the House floor as a closed rule in March of 2010. This coercive, partisan piece of legislation which is going to affect health care in this country for every man, woman, and child for the next three generations, this was brought under a closed rule.

We are trying to fix one very narrow problem contained within these pages. It seems to me that there has been ample discussion. A bill was debated under suspension. It did not receive the required two-thirds vote, so it is being brought back today under a rule, and the minority will have an opportunity to offer an amendment during the motion to recommit. This was a closed rule which was very damaging to the country. Today's closed rule is simply to fix one of the many problems contained herein.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I remind the gentleman that the Speaker of the House said when the Republicans won the majority that they were going to conduct proceedings here in the most open way possible--this will be the most open and transparent House ever. And it has become the most closed House ever.

Because the gentleman brought up the Affordable Care Act, I want to make sure he understands the facts. While the bill we are talking about right now received 20 minutes of debate under suspension, let me read you the facts about the Affordable Care Act, in case my friend forgot.

The House held nearly 100 hours of hearings and 83 hours of committee markups. The House heard from 181 witnesses, both Democrats and Republicans. 239 amendments were considered in the three committees of jurisdiction, 121 of which were adopted. The bill was available for 72 hours before Members were asked to vote on it on the floor.

The process was just as open in the Senate. The Senate Finance Committee held more than 53 hearings. The Finance Committee also spent 8 days marking up the legislation, the longest markup in 22 years for the committee. The Senate Health Committee held 47 bipartisan hearings, roundtables, and walk-throughs on health care reform. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act may have started out with a different bill number, but the fact remains hundreds of hours of hearings on the Affordable Care Act, hundreds of witnesses, hundreds of amendments considered in the committee, and countless hours of townhall meetings.

My friend on the other side of the aisle likes to say, well, there was a different bill number when we voted here on the floor, but as he knows, the process of using a different bill number is very common around here. In fact, the Republican majority has done it several times in the past 3 years. But regardless of the bill number, the work that went into forming this legislation was one of the most open processes in the history of Congress.

That is the facts on that.

But let me also make one other point. The problem my friends on the other side of the aisle have with the Affordable Care Act is not with the process. It is just they don't believe that people ought to have affordable health care in this country. They have spent countless hours on this floor trying to repeal a bill that eliminates preexisting conditions as a way to deny people insurance.

They have been fighting against a bill that helps senior citizens get free preventive care coverage, that helps close that doughnut hole in the Medicare prescription drug bill. They are fighting against a bill that has brought millions and millions and millions of more people into a process where they can afford health care. So they have been against this from the very beginning.

I think the American people have a very different view. Their view is that they want this bill to work. My friends on the other side of the aisle have just spent countless hours, countless days, countless weeks, countless months just trying to repeal it. It is just Johnny One Note: repeal, repeal, repeal.

This idea that everybody should have affordable health care is such a controversy in the Republican Congress, I can't quite understand why. Why is it such a bad idea that everybody in this Congress has access to good quality health care? Why is that an idea that causes such resentment on the other side of the aisle? I don't get it.

We ought to make sure that this law gets implemented properly, and we ought to do this the right way. My friends don't want to do it the right way, so we are going to have to wait for the Senate to work it out with the administration and then send it back to us. There really should be a better way to do this.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Does the gentleman have any other speakers?

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

As much as I would like to continue this lively back-and-forth, we both know each other's positions on this extremely well.

No, I have no other speakers.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question.

If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that would allow the House to consider the Fair Minimum Wage Act. This week, the Senate will vote to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Now is the time for the House to act and to honor our commitment to the middle class by giving hard-working Americans fair pay.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Massachusetts?

There was no objection.

Mr. McGOVERN. Again, I would urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, who like to talk about how the Republican majority is committed to allowing the House to work its will and is committed to an open and transparent process, to vote with us on this.

We have been trying to get the minimum wage bill to the floor forever, and we can't even get it up for a vote so that every Member has an opportunity to vote up or down. This is that opportunity so that we can have that vote, a vote to help lift people out of poverty and to help give people an opportunity to live better lives.

There are millions of workers in this country who are working full time--who are working hard at minimum wage jobs--and they are still stuck in poverty. There are millions and millions of people in this country who work hard full time at minimum wage jobs, but who earn so little that they still qualify for SNAP, and they rely on that program to put food on their tables because their paychecks don't provide enough.

This is an important issue, and I hope that my colleagues will support me on this. I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question, and I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule.

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