Repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. This bill is about restoring choice not to have insurance, not to have the assurance that if you get sick, you are going to be able to not go bankrupt. That is what this bill is about.

Mr. Speaker, this House is about to hold its 56th vote to undermine or repeal the Affordable Care Act, which came to us, by the way, by route of The Heritage Foundation, as I think probably most of you recall.

But this vote is different than the previously full repeal votes for one significant reason. Since the last repeal vote, the health insurance marketplace has opened and is working. Over 9 1/2 million Americans have signed up through these marketplaces for health care coverage for 2015 so far. That means that with today's vote, Republicans are choosing to take away health care coverage from millions of Americans.

This vote will also remove patient protections and cost savings reforms. To make matters worse, today's vote would also defund the bipartisan popular CHIP program that helps States cover uninsured children. So it abandons children as well.

In 2011, when House Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they included language that said they would replace it with something else; and I say to my friend, Mr. Pitts, Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding that, they have not done so. However, they still have failed to give us an alternative.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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