Mr. President, I rise today in support of S.J. Res. 63, a resolution of disapproval on the Trump administration's final rule allowing the expansion of short-term junk health insurance plans. My home State of California recently passed a law prohibiting these short-term plans to protect consumers because these plans do not offer real coverage and are allowed to only take healthy consumers. One hundred thirty million non-elderly Americans have a preexisting condition, including 16 million in California. Among the most important provisions in the Affordable Care Act are the consumer protection requirements for health insurance plans that ensure preexisting conditions no longer dictate access to health coverage and essential benefits that ensure coverage is meaningful and comprehensive. It does a cancer patient little good to have health insurance that doesn't cover chemotherapy, just as coverage without maternal care is meaningless to an expectant mother. In fact, before the Affordable Care Act was passed, three out of four plans on the individual market did not cover labor and delivery. An analysis by Kaiser Family Foundation just this last April found that of the more than 600 short-term plans offered through two major insurance websites, eHealth and Agile Health Insurance, across 45 States, none included maternity care. It gets worse: 71 percent offered no prescription drug coverage, and 43 percent of these plans didn't cover mental healthcare services.…
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