Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for yielding.

Affordable Care Act

My good friend from Wyoming was on the floor yesterday, I believe. He
is a frequent critic of the Affordable Care Act. He made a pretty
simple point that was reported in the press yesterday critical of the
administration for holding so many events talking about the success of
the Affordable Care Act.

His suggestion was that we shouldn't be celebrating--the
administration shouldn't be celebrating--the success of the Affordable
Care Act in terms of the number of people who are gaining access to it,
the stabilizing cost curve of health care expenditures all across the
country, and the number of people whose emotional well-being is much
better today because they don't have to worry about ever losing their
health care simply because they get sick, or losing all of their
savings simply because their child comes down with an expensive
illness.

I guess I would beg to differ because I talk to people all across my
State of Connecticut who are celebrating today because the ACA works.
They are celebrating because their lives have been transformed by the
fact that we now have finally made a commitment as a nation to make
sure that if someone's son gets sick, they won't lose their savings,
their college 529, their house, their car, just because of an illness.

I think the Affordable Care Act is something to celebrate because a
lot of my constituents believe the same thing. Betsy from Litchfield,
CT, said that without the Affordable Care Act, she would not have
health insurance at all due to her preexisting condition. One month before the ACA was implemented, she was sick with stage 4 cancer and her insurance company
gave her 2 weeks' notice that it was going to end her coverage early.
Luckily, Betsy was able to resolve that issue. But she says: ``The
bottom line is that before the Affordable Care Act, health insurance
could and did kick sick people off of their rolls and `pre-existing
conditions' left many uninsured indefinitely.''

She says:

If you are not insured and have to pay the outrageous costs
of U.S. health care out-of-pocket, you will quickly spend all
of your retirement savings. That was the situation I was
facing in December 2013 and it was an unsettling prospect.

Linda from Winsted, CT, says she is grateful for affordable health
care because she has multiple chronic illnesses such as diabetes,
hypertension, and osteoarthritis. She was unable to buy health
insurance at any price because the health insurance companies were
charging her more because of her preexisting conditions. In Linda's
view, this issue boils down to people having basic rights, the freedom
to be healthy, the freedom for her to live a life in which she knows
she is going to be able to afford coverage for herself.

She said this in an email to me: ``There is no freedom in poverty and
certainly none in needless human suffering.''

So Betsy is celebrating today. Linda is celebrating today. There are
millions of others like them all across the country who know the
Affordable Care Act is working.

But it is not just those individuals, it is newspapers, from the New
York Times to USA TODAY, and the Washington Post on down, that are
saying with a clear voice: ``The Affordable Care Act has achieved
nearly all of its ambitious goals,'' and ``11.4 million Americans are
now signed up for health care.''

This is a success story all across the country, but a success story
that is at risk. It is at risk because of a Supreme Court which is
considering an evisceration of the Affordable Care Act that would be a
stunning act of judicial overreach if the plaintiffs were to succeed in
the King v. Burwell case. Their contention is simply that it was the
intent of Congress to only provide insurance subsidies to States that
had State exchanges and not Federal exchanges. I haven't found a single
Senator or Representative who voted for that law who says it was their
intent to punish States that didn't establish State exchanges by
withholding subsidies from millions of Americans. In fact, there is no
way to plainly read the statute without coming to the conclusion that
subsidies were not just intended but written into the law to go to
every single State, no matter what kind of exchange they decided to
establish. The law says that because it specifically states that States
that don't choose to set up their own exchange will have a Federal
exchange take the place of that State exchange.

The totality of the law is clear as well. If the Federal Government
had intended to give subsidies only to States that had State exchanges,
they would have also made the insurance reforms contingent upon those
State exchanges being established. Instead, the insurance reforms are
nationwide, meaning that, clearly, the statute was set up to make
subsidies nationwide, because the insurance reforms cannot exist--
cannot exist--without those subsidies being available to people to be
able to buy affordable insurance.

It is not just the individuals who voted for this law who are clear
that subsidies should be available; it is the Congressional Budget
Office. The Congressional Budget Office reads statutes we pass,
independently interprets them, and then assesses a cost to the laws we
pass. Doug Elmendorf was before the Appropriations Committee yesterday
and I asked him a simple question: When you independently reviewed the
Affordable Care Act, did you come to the conclusion that it allowed for
subsidies to go to State and Federal exchanges? His answer was clear:
Yes. We read the Affordable Care Act as to provide insurance subsidies
to both State exchanges and Federal exchanges and, thus, we priced the
bill accordingly.

The law is clear. The law's intent is clear. The voices of those who
voted for it are clear. The independent Congressional Budget Office is
clear. The Affordable Care Act only works if subsidies flow to both
States that have Federal exchanges and States that have State
exchanges.

For families such as those of Betsy in Litchfield, CT, and Linda in
Winsted, CT, who continue celebrating the success of the Affordable
Care Act on the ground floor for the millions of lives that have been
transformed, this body needs to continue to stand up for the premise
that the Affordable Care Act continues to work. That is absolutely
something to celebrate.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. MURPHY. I appreciate my friend's question and I will be quick in
the answer because I know we are running short on time.

I actually asked the CBO Director a question very similar to the one
the Senator from Wyoming proposes. I said: Explain to me why your
report actually says the Affordable Care Act is going to cost 10
percent less than you originally estimated and explain to me why the
insurance subsidies are going to cost 20 percent less than you
originally estimated.

His answer was very clear: It is because premiums have come in lower
than CBO initially estimated.

In fact, this year, Kaiser reviewed premiums within these exchanges
all across the country and said the average premium increase from last
year to this year is 1 percent all across the country. In Connecticut,
our biggest insurer increased their premiums by 1 percent. One of the
other offerers on the exchange decreased their premiums by 10 percent.
The reason the Affordable Care Act is costing much less today is
because our actual experience--not our estimated experience into the
future--is that premiums are being stabilized in large part because of
the reforms in this act.

So if we want to talk about actual experience--what is happening on
the ground today--it is that we are seeing premiums coming in almost
exactly where they were last year, this year, in comparison to 5 years
ago and 10 years ago when we were seeing double-digit increases in
premiums from year to year.

So part of the reason I am celebrating this law, quite frankly, I say
to my good friend, is because the actual experience from this year to
last year is that premiums are remaining stable and in some places like
Connecticut are actually coming down, and the Affordable Care Act is
costing less money than was initially estimated by CBO, in large part
because premiums are lower than expected.

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I think I might not be alone, I say to my
good friend from Wyoming, in suggesting that most people probably would
not suggest that 11 million people signing up for health care means the
law is unpopular. Indeed, we have seen a reduction by 25 percent in
those across the country who do not have insurance, in a year's worth
of time. I think that is a pretty stunning uptake, and it shows how
desperately people wanted insurance. But, again, I asked the same
question to the CBO head yesterday. His review of why there has been a
slight differential--it is a pretty small one between what they
initially estimated and why people signed up--is because more companies
are maintaining their own health care insurance, less cancellations are
happening, and, thus, there are fewer people who are uninsured. So this
second argument as to how the sky was going to fall after health care
reform, that you were going to see mass cancellations of policies, the
CBO Director is saying the reason the number is coming in slightly
below where it was initially estimated--albeit 11 million people have
insurance because of this law--is because employers are holding on to
their insurance, even though we heard from many detractors of the law
there was going to be a mass exodus of private insurance plans. Twenty-
five percent fewer people have no insurance today. That is the bottom
line. In Connecticut, 50 percent fewer people have no insurance. There
is just no way to argue that we have not made a big dent in the number
of uninsured because of this law's passage.

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