Heidi Alexander: “I want to talk for a moment about something that is on the minds of anybody in this country who is making $60,000…”

“I want to talk for a moment about something that is on the minds of anybody in this country who is making $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 too much to have a subsidy to pay for your healthcare insurance and maybe are paying $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 of that salary for your insurance this year and who has heard from a lot of people that on October 1, the insurance companies are going to announce that your premium is going up. That is whom I would like to talk with today. Specifically, let me use the example of a woman named Marty in Tennessee. She came up to me before Christmas at the Chick-fil-A on Charlotte Road in Nashville, and she stopped me while I was getting my mac and cheese at Chick-fil-A, and she said: My name is Marty. I am a self-employed farmer. A few years ago, my health insurance was $300 a month, today it is $1,300 a month, and I cannot afford that. Well, in Tennessee, prices for health insurance for people who work and don't get any subsidy to help them buy their insurance and don't get insurance on the job, they don't get it from Medicare or Medicaid, people who work, the self-employed farmer, the contractor, the plumber, the songwriter, somebody who might be making $60,000, say--they are like Marty. They are paying $20,000 for their health insurance, and they cannot afford that. I told Marty: I think we have a Christmas present for you.…”