Providing for Consideration of H.R. 160, Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2015, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1190, Protecting Seniors' Access to Medicare Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, today, I rise in opposition to the rule which, once again, deprives Members of this body the opportunity to debate amendments that will improve the underlying legislation.

I rise in opposition to this body's misguided priorities. Again, the American people are seeing Congress rehash the same tired debates. How many references were there to people that were Speakers of this House, that were Senate majority leaders, to healthcare reform, which has already withstood several elections and is the law of the land?

What we have before us today are two more bills that repeal part of the Affordable Care Act. We have now considered over 60 bills to repeal, defund, or dismantle the Affordable Care Act, rather than improve and build upon it.

With all the work that remains to be done, we could be debating legislation to renew our expiring highway trust fund and repair our crumbling roads and bridges.

We could take up legislation to renew the charter of the Import-Export Bank, and we will be offering that soon on the previous question.

We could consider a bill to repair our broken immigration system or help the millions of Americans who are living below the poverty line, even though they work two jobs and it is increasingly hard to support their families; or we could take on the critical matter of climate change and confront the fact that it has contributed to one of the worst droughts in our Nation's history.

But, oh, no, it is more important to have the 61st and 62nd repeal of parts of the Affordable Care Act, rather than move forward with a future-oriented agenda for the American people.

Now, let's get into some of the specifics of the underlying legislation. The most recent estimate by the Congressional Budget Office found that a total of 27 million people will gain access to healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act over the next 10 years, who otherwise would not have had coverage.

That is to say nothing of the additional millions of Americans who benefit from the Affordable Care Act by having coverage for preexisting conditions for the first time in their lives, are no longer subject to lifetime caps that could leave them bankrupt if they get a serious illness, or people that are able to stay as young adults up to age 26 on their parents' plan.

Constituents from all areas of my district have shared stories of their success using our State's health exchange, Connect for Health Colorado, and described how the Affordable Care Act's coverage provided by the ACA has improved their lives.

I have heard from constituents like Morgan, from Nederland, Colorado, who used the exchange to enroll in the exact same plan she had before the Affordable Care Act, but her premiums decreased, and the services that were covered expanded--more value for her money.

Or Donna, who recently moved to Boulder, Colorado--Donna is an outdoor enthusiast, like so many in my district, but was afraid to make her way to the mountains until she had secured healthcare coverage.

Through Connect for Health Colorado and the premium tax credits she has access to under the Affordable Care Act, she is now enrolled in a comprehensive medical and dental plan that ensures she won't become bankrupt if she sustains an injury.

These are far from isolated cases. In my home State of Colorado, 16.5 percent of people lacked health insurance before ACA. According to a recent study of the Kaiser Family Foundation, that figure has dropped to 9 percent by last year.

The success is not limited to my State. According to a Gallup poll released in April, the percentage of Americans lacking health care nationwide has dropped by more than a third since the marketplace opened at the end of 2013, from 18 percent to under 12 percent.

The Affordable Care Act is working; instead of continuing in that vein, once again, the Republican Congress is seeking to repeal various parts of that law, rather than move forward and improve it.

The first of today's two bills, the so-called Protecting Seniors' Access to Medicare Act, doesn't protect anyone's access to anything. The Advisory Board it seeks to repeal, which has been vilified and completely mischaracterized in the past, is actually something far more mundane and important to the processes of Medicare.

It is a board of advisers who make nonbinding recommendations to Congress about how we can reduce healthcare costs and strengthen Medicare solvency over the long term, without sacrificing the quality of care, something that all of us, as cost-conscious Members of Congress, should be interested in seeing.

Now, we can debate all day the exact composition of the Board or which committees in Congress should have jurisdiction over its recommendations. Those are valid considerations--or, instead, we can discuss repealing the Board in its entirety, which is what we are talking about here today. This Advisory Board will provide critical advice to help Congress reduce the cost of providing health care.

Now, interestingly enough, this amendment pays for the $7 billion cost of eliminating this Board by slashing nearly $9 billion in funding from the prevention and public health fund. This fund is used for vital preventative health programs, like childhood vaccines, helping people quit smoking, stroke prevention, and maternal wellness. The cornerstone of health savings is preventative medicine.

In fact, I cosponsor a bill with my friend, Mr. Burgess, who is managing the bill on the other side, that would allow the Congressional Budget Office to account for the long-term savings of preventative health initiatives when it scores legislation.

If Mr. Burgess' own bill were to become law, and I hope it does, it would show that the so-called way that we are paying for this repeal is illusory. Eliminating the preventative healthcare program actually can cost money in the long run. Under the congressional scoring model that we both support, it would likely not even register as a cost saving, or if it did, it would be much less than the $9 billion.

The second bill being considered, the Protect Medical Innovation Act, aims to do something that many of us on both sides support, repealing the Affordable Care Act's excise tax on medical devices. The medical device tax is one of the measures originally included by the Senate in the Affordable Care Act to fund the badly needed consumer protections and benefits that form the core of the bill.

Now, again, it is easy to support tax cuts. This body has put before us many, tax cut after tax cut after tax cut that are unfunded. The whole discussion about how you can afford to cut taxes is how you pay for it. What government waste do you cut? What other taxes or income do you use to offset the cost of these tax cuts?

Of course, we don't want to slow the pace of progress with unnecessary costs and burdens, and we want to make sure that medical device manufacturers have every incentive to increase their research and development and not pass these costs along to consumers.

Unfortunately, even though I, along with Alma Adams from North Carolina and Matt Cartwright from Pennsylvania, offered an amendment in the Rules Committee that would have paid for repealing the medical device tax using a commonsense approach that wouldn't suppress economic growth, our amendment was not allowed to even be discussed here on the floor of the House.

Not only would our amendment to pay for the medical device repeal have avoided adding nearly $30 billion to our deficit, as this bill would do before us today, but it also would have helped bring balance to our Nation's energy sector by stopping the government from choosing winners and losers in energy and lessen our dependence on fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, under this rule, we don't get a vote or debate on the floor. We are left with two bad choices. We can, of course, leave in place a tax that many of us want to remove; or we can add $25 billion to our deficit. Neither of those are the right answers for the American people or for medical device companies or the consumers who use medical device products.

The American people deserve better. If we defeat this rule, an open process will allow Republicans and Democrats to offer real, constructive, better ideas of how to improve upon these two pieces of legislation.

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

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Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to allow for the consideration of legislation that would reauthorize the Export-Import Bank for 7 years.

To discuss our proposal, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Maxine Waters), the distinguished ranking member on the Committee on Financial Services.

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