WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on Tuesday led colleagues on the floor of the U.S. Senate calling out the Trump administration’s continued sabotage of the American health care system as the anniversary of Senate Republicans’ failed attempt to dismantle critical health care protections approaches.

 

In a speech on the floor of the Senate, Murphy criticized the administration for ongoing efforts to sabotage the health care system that have increased health care costs and led to worse care for patients. The Trump administration’s steps to weaken the health care system include instructing federal agencies to unwind critical protections provided by the Affordable Care Act, repealing the individual mandate, and currently supporting a lawsuit that could invalidate protections for people with pre-existing health conditions. Murphy pointed to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court as the next phase of the sabotage campaign.

 

“If Republicans in Congress can't get the American people to support a legislative act to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the next hope is for the courts to do it,” said Murphy. “That's why the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh is so critical to this continued campaign of trying to undermine the Affordable Care Act, because you probably can't get the majority of members of Congress to wipe away protections for people with pre-existing conditions, but maybe you can get the Supreme Court to do it.”

 

The full text of Murphy’s speech is available below:

 

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Mr. President, we are on the verge of the one-year mark since the United States Senate attempted to take away health care from 30 million Americans and was told no by the American public. For virtually the entire time since the passage of the affordable care act, Republicans in the house and the Senate engaged in an exercise that was futile while President Obama was in office but then was made possible by the election of Donald Trump. That was the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which extended care to 20 million Americans who didn't have it, guaranteed that health insurance would actually cover the things you need and protected people who were sick or people with preexisting conditions from discrimination.

When Republicans finally took over, they realized that they had spent a whole lot of time criticizing the Affordable Care Act but not a lot of time figuring out what would come next. And most of 2017 was spent in an embarrassing series of proposals that, according to the congressional budget office, would uninsure somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million to 30 million people. Finally, when a vote was called on the floor of the Senate, just enough Republican senators chose to side with the American people who want to maintain the protections of the affordable care act and work to perfect it, but the bill failed by one vote. That one-year mark will occur this weekend, on Saturday. And so a few of us want to come to the floor today to talk about what's happened since that fateful vote a year ago, that was, frankly, celebrated all across this country as folks who were deeply fearful that their health care was going to be ripped away from them by the United States Congress realized that they might be able to rely on it for at least another year. But let me set the stage first by reminding people of the promises that were made. This is President Trump shortly after his election, just before his swearing-in. He said "We're going to have insurance for everybody - people covered under the law can expect to have great health care, much less expensive, and much better."

Now, that's a clear promise that the president made. Everybody's going to have insurance, it's going to be less expensive, and it's going to be better. More insurance, less expensive, better quality. The vote that took place a year ago Saturday would have done exactly the opposite. It would have kicked 30 million people off of insurance. It would have driven up costs for millions of Americans, especially those people with preexisting conditions, and coverage would have been much worse, not much better, in part because people with preexisting conditions wouldn't be able to access care. So this promise never came true because of the vote that we took a year ago this Saturday. But occasionally the president does say something that's true.

This is a picture of the celebration that the House of Representatives had at the White House the day that they voted on a proposal that would rip away health care from 30 million Americans before the vote that took place here in the Senate. A lot of smiling faces of members of Congress who were so excited that people who had cancer or people who had diabetes would be unable to get health care insurance. This quote is not actually from this press conference, it's from a rally that the president held just a few weeks ago. He was talking about the fact that John McCain and some others voted against that proposal on the Senate floor that caused it to fail, but he said -- this is the president's words  "it's alright because we've essentially gutted it - the Affordable Care Act - anyway. It's all right because we've essentially gutted it anyway."

So that summarizes what happened since the failed vote on the floor of the Senate a year ago. President Trump and his Republican friends in Congress, all smiling behind him, have gutted the affordable care act, not because they want better health care for people, but because they are just angry that they couldn't get the votes to do it here in Congress and so they are doing it another means. And so a few of us are going to be down on the floor to talk about what has happened in that last year. Now, listen, I actually think that most of my colleagues do want better healthcare for their constituents but I don't understand how any of what has happened, either through legislative act or through administrative action, gets us there, gets us to that promise that President Trump made in January of 2017.

Because here's what's gone on. First the president set an executive order saying that all of his agencies should start to take their own actions to unwind the protections of the Affordable Care Act. Then he stopped the marketing for the Affordable Care Act so that less people would know about the options that were available to them. Then the president came to Congress and worked with Republicans to take away one of the most important pillars of the Affordable Care Act, a requirement that healthy people buy insurance. That action alone will result in 13 million people losing insurance and rates going up for 10 million Americans. Most recently the president authorized the sale of junk insurance plans across the country—plans that don't have to cover mental health, prescription drugs, or maternity care. He then cut funding even deeper for the personnel who help you find what insurance is right for you and he instructed the people who remained to push Americans on to the junk plans. Then the president sent his lawyers to court to argue that Congress can't actually protect people with preexisting conditions because it's unconstitutional, which would wipe out all of the protections that people enjoy today.

And so it's really no mystery as to why, as the 2019 premium increases are coming out, they are catastrophic. They’re catastrophic. 14 states have insurance companies that requested premium increases of 10% to 20%. Connecticut is one of those. Five states have insurance companies that requested premium increases of 30% or more, and—think about that for a second, 30% or more. Who can afford a 30% or 40% increase in premiums? One insurance company requested a 94% increase in rates. And in 21 of the states that had rates filed already, the insurers said the reason they are doing this, the reason they are passing along enormous premium increases, is because of the sabotage run by the president and by this Congress. All, most of it occurring since the failure of the repeal vote a year ago. It's all right, says the president. We didn't need to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That vote that we're marking the one-year anniversary of doesn't really matter because we've essentially gutted it, the Affordable Care Act, the American health care system anyway.

And so, finally, before I turn this over to the Ranking Member on the HELP Committee, I just want to talk about the next phase of the sabotage campaign. If Republicans in Congress can't get the American people to support a legislative act to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the next hope is for the courts to do it. And so that's why the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh is so critical to this continued campaign of trying to undermine the Affordable Care Act. Because you probably can't get the majority of Members of Congress to wipe away protections for people with preexisting conditions, but maybe you can get the Supreme Court to do it.

There's a case that I just referenced that the Trump administration is supporting, moving its way through the courts that would constitutionally invalidate Congress’ protections for people with preexisting conditions. These are people with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, melanoma, cerebral palsy, Crohn’s disease, ALS, addiction, lupus, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, the list goes on. And President Trump made clear during the campaign that he wasn’t going to pick a judge in the mold of John Roberts who would uphold the Affordable Care Act. He was going to pick judges that would rule with him to strike down the Affordable Care Act. That's also probably why he outsourced the decision on who to pick for this vacant slot to political groups like the Heritage Foundation.

So the expectation is that Judge Kavanaugh will deliver one of the five needed votes to strike down the law on the books that Congress can’t find the votes to override protecting people with preexisting conditions. The Supreme Court could take away your health care if you have a history of any of these diseases. And if that happens, the results are lethal. If you have metastatic cancer and you don't have the protection in the law that says that insurance companies can't charge you more because you're sick, a recent study shows that you will be charged a rate $142,000 higher than what you pay today. If you're an individual with diabetes, your increase could be 137% on top of what you’re paying now.

These are the stakes as we prepare to vote on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination, and it is all in service of this very intentional, very deliberate, very planful campaign of sabotage. A year ago this Saturday, the American people got their way and this body decided not to repeal the Affordable Care Act because people liked the fact that 20 million people have insurance, people liked the fact that people with preexisting conditions are protected. That night the American people got their way, but since then, the president and this Congress have been working to undermine it. And the next step in that plan is the elevation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. It's important for us to come down to the floor and explain what the stakes are.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

 

###