Michael Bennet: “Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate very much the comments from my colleague from Massachusetts and my colleague from…”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate very much the comments from my colleague from Massachusetts and my colleague from Pennsylvania. I notice my colleagues from the other side of the aisle are not here tonight to defend this piece of legislation. It doesn't surprise me, given what is in this legislation and given what we have heard over the last week. The Senator from Massachusetts was explaining what it was we were trying to do when we passed the Affordable Care Act, now years ago. Part of what we were trying to do was to extend coverage to a lot of Americans that didn't have it. In my State of Colorado that meant over 600,000 Coloradans who didn't have it before the Affordable Care Act was passed. Another thing we were trying to do was to say to insurance companies that it is not OK to have as your business practice that you take month after month after month of premiums from people and then when they call on the phone and say: My kid was sick; my kid got struck by lightning; my kid had an accident, to then hold them on the phone as long as possible just as a way of denying their claim. Most people in America are too busy trying to move their family ahead, trying to get by, to stay on the phone all day with an insurance company. While we were at that, we said: It is not fair to deny people insurance in the richest country in the world because they have preexisting conditions.…”