On the recordApril 9, 2014
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, let me first acknowledge the work that has been done by so many of our colleagues here bipartisanly, the gentleman from Delaware, the gentleman from California, the committees of jurisdiction, and leadership, I suspect, on both sides of the aisle. I, too, have been involved in trying to deal with this. If you take a look at the title of the bill, it tells you what they are trying to do. The bill is called the Expatriate Health Coverage Clarification Act, so the bill tells us that it is to deal with the issue of expatriates. Well, who are expatriates, and how are they impacted by the Affordable Care Act? An expatriate, I think most of us would acknowledge, is an American who is told by his or her employer, we need to send you abroad to go work--whatever the task is--but I need you to go; so that expatriate, now living abroad, will be told that he or she must have an insurance policy that abides by the Affordable Care Act's protections for Americans who get health care here. The insurers will say: well, we may have to deal with different standards in that other country, so give us some flexibility. That is very fair. We should make sure that any company that has to send a worker abroad has the flexibility to make sure that they are providing good coverage, but that they are not strapped by the regulations that apply to coverage here in the U.S. Everyone agrees with that. Here is the problem: this bill doesn't do that.…
