WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) delivered remarks on the Senate floor about the Senate Republicans’ health care bill.
“I urge everyone watching and listening to remember: this fight is not over. The Senate will be back next month, and Republicans will be doing everything they can to make tweaks or shaves or changes or amendments to the bill to get it passed this body,” said Senator Coons. “We need the engagement, persistence, and even the resistance of Delawareans and Americans across the country to make sure the Senate Trumpcare bill never becomes law.”
“Since I came to the Senate seven years ago, I’ve said more times than I can count that I want to work with Republicans to fix the parts of the Affordable Care Act that need fixing. Let’s simplify the reporting requirements that unnecessarily burden small businesses and increase the tax credits that help them offer insurance to their employees. Let’s find ways together to increase competition and expand the tax credits to bring down premiums and deductibles on the individual market,” said Senator Coons. “Let’s explore new mechanisms that control health care costs by incentivizing reforms and produce healthy outcomes, rather than more tests and services. Sadly, the Senate Trumpcare bill does none of those things.”
Full audio and video are available here.
Senator Coons’ remarks, as delivered, are below:
M. President, I’ve come to the floor tonight to join my colleagues in opposing the Senate health care reform bill, what I’ll call the Senate Trumpcare bill.
I’m also here to thank the thousands of my constituents, the thousands of Delawareans who’ve called and emailed my office to express their opposition to this bill that is neither about “health” nor “care.” It’s because of your efforts – and the efforts of thousands of Americans across the country who have made their voices heard – that the Senate doesn’t have enough votes to pass this Trumpcare bill.
I urge everyone watching and listening to remember: this fight is not over. The Senate will be back next month, and Republicans will be doing everything they can to make tweaks or shaves or changes or amendments to the bill to get it passed this body. We need the engagement, persistence, and even the resistance of Delawareans and Americans across the country to make sure the Senate Trumpcare bill never becomes law.
This is as urgent now as ever because of how fundamentally heartless this bill is. As many nonpartisan organizations, including the Congressional Budget Office, have pointed out, this bill is essentially a massive tax break for the wealthy paid for on the backs of some of America’s most vulnerable citizens.
Many of my colleagues have already discussed the devastating impact this bill would have over time on millions of Americans. This Senate bill would make hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid. It would slash tax credits that help Americans buy health insurance on the individual market. It would force 22 million Americans off of their health insurance, and drive up costs for many millions more.
If that’s not bad enough, the Senate Trumpcare bill does all of this slashing and cutting just to give another tax break for our wealthiest citizens. If this bill becomes law, the very richest Americans will get an extra $700 billion in tax breaks over the next 10 years.
Now, if the Senate Trumpcare bill only affected the millions of Americans who depend on Medicaid or who purchase insurance on the individual market, this bill would be unconscionable. But it’s even worse.
Let me explain. Many of our constituents don’t realize that even Americans who get their health insurance through their employer, the 150 million Americans who get insurance through their employer, have benefited from the Affordable Care Act.
In fact, I think in some ways, the consumer protections put in place by the ACA is the most important accomplishment of that bill. A core requirement of the ACA was that all health insurance plans cover what are known as “essential health benefits.” These are basic services like emergency care, maternity and newborn care, prescription drugs, pediatric services, hospitalization, health care for the mentally ill, and substance use for the addicted. To put it more succinctly, these are the reasons many people want health insurance in the first place.
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, almost every insurance plan in the country today has to carry these core services. That includes the more than 150 million Americans – and half a million Delawareans – who get health insurance through their job.
The Senate Trumpcare bill would allow states through waivers over time to gut these essential health benefit requirements, gradually making many Americans’ health insurance less and less valuable and less and less protective for their health and their families.
That provision of the Senate Trumpcare bill would also allow states to waive the ban on insurers imposing annual and lifetime limits on essential health benefit coverage. That means that even if you get insurance, good insurance, through your employer, if you have an unexpected development, such as the birth of a child prematurely who develops serious medical challenges or a terrible diagnosis that requires expensive and repeated surgery, you either come up with the money on your own – or you’re forced into bankruptcy once you hit the lifetime cap.
Let me demonstrate with an all-too-real example. About 1 in 10 newborns have to spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, after they’re born. According to the American Medical Association, in the NICU, quote, “it is not unusual for costs to top $1 million for an extended stay.” That means even a baby born to parents with great insurance coverage through their employer could hit their lifetime insurance cap before they leave the hospital for the first time.
And as Americans are scrambling to find ways to pay for their astronomical out-of-pocket costs under the Senate Trumpcare bill, wealthy Americans and corporations will be given huge tax breaks.
Moreover, while Senate Republicans may claim that their bill does still cover pre-existing conditions, insurance under this bill would be rendered meaningless if it doesn’t cover what you need to treat your pre-existing condition through these essential health benefits.
So, M. President, let’s briefly recap the Senate Trumpcare bill. Millions of Americans lose health insurance. Those who manage to keep it end up paying more but getting less coverage. And the wealthiest Americans get yet another a tax break. That’s a painful, even cynical political calculation.
M. President, since I came to the Senate seven years ago, I’ve said more times than I can count that I want to work with Republicans to fix the parts of the Affordable Care Act that need fixing.
Let’s simplify the reporting requirements that unnecessarily burden small businesses and increase the tax credits that help them offer insurance to their employees.
Let’s find ways together to increase competition and expand the tax credits to bring down premiums and deductibles on the individual market.
Let’s explore new mechanisms that control health care costs by incentivizing reforms and produce healthy outcomes, rather than more tests and services.
Sadly, the Senate Trumpcare bill does none of those things.
It is my hope that after today’s developments, after the next few weeks, after hearing from their constituents and returning in the next month, that my colleagues will recognize that, if we work together, we can address the broken parts of the ACA and sustain the best of what it’s done to expand insurance and health care for millions of Americans.
Let me close with a story I shared on the steps of the Capitol earlier today.
This is Kerry Orr. Kerry is from my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. Kerry is a massage therapist and yoga instructor. Like many Americans, she considers the Affordable Care Act, quote, “nothing short of miraculous.”
Kerry signed up for health insurance in 2014 thanks to a subsidy provided through the ACA. She’d had some nagging abdominal and lower back pain, but didn’t think much of it, considering she had no family history of disease and, “had never even had stitches before.”
But, that next year, in January 2015, a routine procedure covered by her new insurance, which she told me she wouldn’t have even gone for if it hadn’t been covered by her new health insurance, revealed that Kerry in fact had stage 3 colon cancer. She had surgery a week later, followed by six months of chemotherapy, and she ultimately faced no out of pocket expenses and was fully in remission.
Kerry’s cancer has now been in remission since September 2015. As she wrote to me earlier this year, quote, “The ACA came along at the last possible moment to save my life. I am certain that without it, I would have continued to live with the discomfort and try to self-treat until the cancer was too advanced to be successfully treated.”
I’m opposing the Senate Trumpcare bill for Kerry, and for the thousands of Delawareans and millions of Americans just like her.
I’ve heard stories from Delawareans about things that need to be fixed in the Affordable Care Act, and I hope I get the chance to work across the aisle to do that.
But, I’ve also heard from hundreds of Delawareans whose lives have been improved or, in cases like Kerry’s, saved by the Affordable Care Act, and I will not yield on defending the best parts of the ACA that have saved the lives of Americans across this country.
In the days and weeks to come, I hope all Americans will stay active, stay engaged, and stay the course so that we can push aside this cruel, cynical bill and find an opportunity to work together on a bill with real heart. This fight is not yet over and I will not yet yield.
Thank you, M. President. I yield the floor.
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