Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I have spent much of my time in public service working to promote bipartisanship in health care. In fact, the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee is here. I think he may speak next. Our colleague from Tennessee Senator Alexander is a cosponsor of my comprehensive health care reform bill. So, for me, bipartisanship and health care policy is enormously important, and there are certainly plenty of ways in which Democrats and Republicans could be working together to strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be on the menu either today or in this Congress.

Today, instead of looking forward on health care in America, the Senate, on a transportation bill, will have a vote on whether to go backward on health care--backward to the days when health care in America was for the healthy and the wealthy. I specifically used those words because the moment you repeal the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans lose protection against preexisting conditions. The moment that happens, if you are healthy and wealthy, no sweat, but for the millions who are aren't, they are back in that abyss where they go to bed at night worried that they may get wiped out the very next morning because they have a preexisting health condition.

Protection for those individuals will be gone the moment the Senate votes. I hope the Senate will not vote for ending the Affordable Care Act this afternoon, but the moment it does, gone is that protection for preexisting conditions. Gone are the tax credits. These are opportunities for Americans to get a little bit of tax relief when hard-working families pay for health insurance--gone

when we repeal the Affordable Care Act. Gone would be the protections that bar insurance companies from charging top dollar for rock-bottom coverage. Gone would be the protections for young adults. Right now, they can't be locked out of their parents' insurance plans. Gone would be the protection for individuals to make sure their insurance isn't canceled the moment they get sick. Once again, pregnancy could be considered a preexisting condition.

So what I think this shows is that this debate is no longer about numbers on a page, bills we write, lots of charts, lots of graphs, lots of small print. But this isn't an abstraction, when we go back, as I have described, to the days when health care was for the healthy and the wealthy. More than 16 million Americans have gained health insurance coverage by virtue of the Affordable Care Act. Their health is on the line every single time there is a vote to repeal that law. So those are the consequences.

I will wrap up because I see my good friend from Tennessee is here, as well as my Senator and my colleague from Utah. Both of them have joined me repeatedly in trying to promote bipartisan approaches on health care policy. I don't take a backseat to anybody in this body on working on health care policy in a bipartisan fashion. There is nothing that I think would be more valuable than to have Democrats and Republicans come together, not to talk about repealing this law but to find ways to strengthen it. There is not a law that has been passed that we can't strengthen. And having spoken with my friend from Utah and my friend from Tennessee repeatedly, I think they know I am serious about reaching out for common ground with respect to this issue.

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The pie-in-the-sky insistence that the Affordable Care Act will be repealed and somehow we will not have the suffering I have just described--that is not reality.

What we ought to do is reject this amendment to repeal the Affordable Care Act and then get back to work in a bipartisan way to strengthen the law.

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