The People's Night

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALMER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. The gentleman just acknowledged that I have no social life, but that is fine.

I want to talk a little bit about healthcare. Here is a fact that my Democratic colleagues were desperately trying to keep from the public. Not only do the Republicans support providing health insurance coverage for those with preexisting conditions, but we actually passed legislation that did just that with the American Health Care Act of 2017.

It included an amendment that Representative David Schweikert of Arizona and I introduced that ensured that anyone with a preexisting condition could purchase health insurance. The Palmer-Schweikert amendment established a risk-sharing plan that would allow any individual with a preexisting condition to purchase insurance at the same price as a healthy individual.

It was actually modeled after a successful State-based program in the State of Maine. Instead of billions of dollars being paid out by the Federal Government in bailouts for health insurance companies, our plan, funded by having the majority of the premiums paid for those with preexisting conditions, transferred into a fund, a risk-sharing fund.

This represents an alternative approach to ObamaCare's guaranteed issue provision, which priced everyone as sick, resulting in far higher premiums. As a matter of fact, the premiums got so high that insurance companies literally began pulling out of whole States.

What our amendment did was, if someone had a preexisting condition, they would come to an insurance company, fill out a health survey, mark down if they had had a heart attack or cancer. The insurance company would sell them insurance at the same price as anybody else. But when they paid their premiums, 90 percent of the premiums would go into this risk-sharing agreement.

The insurance company would only keep 10 percent. Now, if the person, the individual became very sick, if it became very expensive, the insurance company would pay the first $7,500 and then 10 percent of the next $25,000, so the most that they were out was $10,000. The risk- sharing plan would pick up the balance and reimburse the providers at the same rate as Medicare.

The way this worked was not only did the premiums go into the risk- sharing plan, 90 percent of the premiums, but the rest of us would pay anywhere from $5 to $10 a month on our premiums. That would go into the risk-sharing plan, and our amendment was backed up with $38 billion.

What this allowed us to do was create a situation where the actuaries could actually be more predictive in what the cost would be; and, as a result, it lowered premiums for everyone. So not only did it cover people with preexisting conditions, but everyone else's premiums came down.

As a matter of fact, in that 20- to 30-year-old age group, it came down 41 percent; 30 to 40 years old came down 33 percent; 40 to 50, 25 percent; 50 to 60, 11.6 percent; and that pre-Medicare 60 to 65 came down 5.9 percent. So what we were doing was trying to repair the American healthcare system, doing it in a way that made sense for people.

Not only that, we have other options that we want to present. For instance, one of the biggest uninsured populations is young people. It doesn't make sense to spend the amount of money you have to spend to pay your premiums when a lot of those folks are earning lower wages.

So we want to set up a plan where you could buy short-term insurance, buy what you need, what you can afford for that time in your life, and it would be for 1 year. Depending on what you bought, your premiums could come down 85 percent. If you needed to extend it, you could extend it for another 3 years. That is transition insurance.

In addition to that, the vast majority of people in America who have a job work for a small business, and small businesses aren't part of a larger group. So we wanted to set up association group plans so that if you are a small business and your city set up an association group plan, you could be in that. Or if you are a farmer, you could be a member of an association group plan that the Farm Bureau established, and premiums there are projected to come down by as much as 50 percent.

The Republicans have the best ideas for repairing our healthcare system, making it affordable, and keeping our promise, a promise that was broken repeatedly: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your insurance, you can keep your doctor.

It is not just about the cost. It is about improving outcomes and helping people live better and healthier.

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