Mike Thompson: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this misnamed piece of legislation. It actually…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this misnamed piece of legislation. It actually should be called The 40th Time We've Wasted the Taxpayers' Time and Money Act. This is a bill that's not new to us. We've seen it before. We've seen this movie before, 39 times as a matter of fact, and we know how it ends. This is just another attempt to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and we've wasted too much time and too much money on this already. What we should be doing is working to make the ACA better, or spending our time trying to help pass some jobs legislation. This bill is particularly cruel because it hits the poorest among us the hardest, and we've seen that movie before also. And we saw it play out--that's why we have this piece of legislation. This is in response to a national crisis. This just didn't come about by itself. Hospitals and doctors and clinics in all of our districts, they provided $100 billion a year in uncompensated care. Families were one layoff away from not having access to health care. People with preexisting conditions that occurred through no fault of their own, maybe they had bad luck with having cancer, or gave birth through a C- section, a preexisting condition, and they could not get coverage. People in all of our districts were hitting the lifetime cap on their health care. This was no accident. It was in response to a crisis. Let's get to work. Let's get this thing improved.…”