WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, on Wednesday called for a vote on legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives introduced by U.S. Representative Annie Kuster (NH-2) and U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) to protect people with pre-existing conditions. 

After U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Chairman of the HELP Committee, objected to the unanimous consent request (UC), Murphy delivered remarks on the U.S. Senate floor calling out the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress for their continued sabotage of the American health care system, including promoting short-term ‘junk insurance plans’ that do not have to cover essential health benefits and can deny people coverage for having a pre-existing condition. Murphy noted that 130 million Americans living with pre-existing conditions, including 522,000 living in Connecticut, could lose their health care coverage if the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are successful. Earlier this week, Murphy joined U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Doug Jones (D-Ala.) to introduce the No Junk Plans Act to overturn the Trump administration’s expansion of junk health insurance plans.

Speaking on the Trump administration’s rule that allows for short-term ‘junk insurance plans’ Murphy offered a UC request, “These are plans that do not cover pre-existing conditions, nor the essential health care benefits. I'm going to offer right now a unanimous consent request to proceed to the immediate consideration of this bill … let me start with a request to bring this legislation that will protect people with pre-existing conditions and the essential health care benefits to the floor.”

“This isn't a political game. These are individuals all across the country who are relying on us to make sure they're not subject to the abuses of the market, relying on us to make sure we don't return to the days in which insurance companies could prevent you from getting health care simply because you are sick, return to the days when you bought an insurance product and then it didn't turn out to ultimately be insurance,” Murphy added.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that over 1 million more people were uninsured in 2018 than were in 2016. Last year, 18 Republican Attorneys General—led by Texas—sued the federal government, arguing that protections for those with pre-existing conditions in the Affordable Care Act are unconstitutional. The Trump administration took the unprecedented step to side with the partisan lawsuit, threatening health insurance coverage for over 20 million Americans. In December, Murphy blasted the ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, who threw out the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, throwing the American health care system into chaos. U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in this lawsuit in July. 

The full text of Murphy’s remarks is below: 

MURPHY: Mr. President, the House recently passed a piece of legislation called Protecting Americans with Pre-existing Conditions Act. The substance of this legislation would prevent a Trump administration rule from going into effect that would allow for states to license the kind of insurance plans that Senator Baldwin was referring to. These are plans that do not cover pre-existing conditions, nor the essential health care benefits. I'm going to offer right now a unanimous consent request to proceed to the immediate consideration of this bill. I suspect it will be objected to and after an opportunity for Republicans to object, I will speak to the merits of this legislation. So, let me start with a request to bring this legislation that will protect people with pre-existing conditions and the essential health care benefits to the floor. My motion is as such, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar 90, H.R. 986, Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act of 2019, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. 

After Alexander objected to Murphy’s UC request, he continued:

MURPHY: Again, I share in Senator Baldwin's disappointment we can't move immediately to this legislation. This isn't a political game. These are individuals all across the country who are relying on us to make sure they're not subject to the abuses of the market, relying on us to make sure we don't return to the days in which insurance companies could prevent you from getting health care simply because you are sick, return to the days when you bought an insurance product and then it didn't turn out to ultimately be insurance. Let's be clear. The waiver that the president has allowed states to take advantage of would absolutely, would by definition of the rule, allow for states to waive the pre-existing condition requirement. The rule itself says that the innovation that happens at the state level does not have to comply with the essential health care benefits requirement. It says in the rule that you do not have to comply with pre-existing conditions requirements. That's the reason that they are so cheap. So, I'm at a loss as to why we have Republicans on the floor saying that pre-existing conditions will be protected under this rule. That's not true. The rule says that states do not have to comply with pre-existing requirement. It says that states do not have to cover essential health care benefits. That's why these ‘junk plans’ are attractive, because they aren't actually insurance. And they are only insurance for people that are at the time very healthy.

We've got to get on the same page here. We've got to be reading from the same script. The fact of the matter is the definition of the rule allows for protections for people with pre-existing conditions to be discriminated against. I'm sorry that we weren't able to bring up this piece of legislation, because health care insurance should be health care insurance. And what we worry about is two things. First, that by allowing for the marketing of these ‘junk plans,’ you're going to have all sorts of people who today aren't sick jumping into those plans, coming off the plans that protect people with pre-existing conditions. The people that are going to be left behind on those regulated plans are people who are sick, people who have pre-existing. And so you're all of a sudden bifurcating the insurance market. You're going to have a market for people that are currently healthy and then you're going to have a market for people who are sick or who have ever had a pre-existing condition. And you don't have to be an actuary. You don't have to have taken classes in health care insurance economics to know that when that happens, rates skyrocket for people who have a pre-existing condition, for the millions of people around this country who have had a serious diagnosis over at some point during their life. 

And so as you sell these junk plans, there's no way but for costs to go up. And that's on top of the increases we saw last year. Last year insurance companies priced in the cost of Trump administration sabotage. They priced into their premiums the attacks on our health care system from the Republican congress. And in many states we saw insurance plans pushing 60%, 40%, in some cases 80% increases in premiums. And now on top of that, for sick people, for people with pre-existing conditions, the rates are going to be even bigger because of the flight of those without pre-existing conditions into market places set up specifically for them. The second thing we worry about is that these ‘junk plans’ market themselves as insurance but they aren’t. 

Here's a list of things that I would generally consider to be covered under my insurance plan. If I bought an insurance plan, if I handed over a check to the insurance company, I kind of think that if I go to the emergency room, I'm not going to have to pay for it out of my pocket. I'm thinking to myself, you know what, if I need prescription drugs, they're going to cover some of that. If I have a mental health diagnosis, doesn't insurance cover my head as well as the rest of my body? These are the things that I would assume that insurance covers, but these junk plans don't cover these things. Junk plans do not cover trips to the emergency room. Junk plans often don't cover hospitalizations. They don't cover prescription drugs. Almost none of them cover maternity care. Your checkups might not be covered under a junk plan. Pre-existing conditions will cost you more. Contraception isn't going to be in lots of these plans. They don't require you to cover lab services or pediatrics. Mental health is not going to be in many of these junk plans. Rehab services if you get injured, you're not going to find those in some of these plans. And if you chronic disease, there's nothing in the law that requires treatment for those to be covered. 

All of a sudden the things you thought insurance covered don't cover it and you've been paying a premium for years and then when you finally need access to the system, it's not there. That's what these plans can do. That's what the law and the Trump administration rule allows states to license as insurance, and that's why we're on the floor today to ask, to plead for our colleagues to bring legislation before this body, either Senator Baldwin's legislation or Representative Kuster's legislation that has already passed the House that would stop these junk insurance plans from being sold all around this country, which will trick many Americans into believing they will have insurance when they don't and will dramatically raise the cost of care potentially in many states for people who have serious pre-existing conditions. I'm not surprised at the objection to both of our unanimous consent requests. Nevertheless, I am disappointed in it. And we will continue to be down here on the floor for as much time as it takes to try to rally the whole of this body to protect people with pre-existing conditions, to fight back against the sabotage of the Affordable Care Act and the health care system by this president. Hopefully one day we'll be successful. I yield the floor

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