Political Quotes

“Again, as someone who was a small-business employer for 27 years and provided health benefits for my staff, I am acutely aware of the challenges in the small-business market which long predate passage of the Affordable Care Act and which is still something that we can do better in terms of helping folks deal with this issue, which, again, is so important because small businesses are the job creators in the American economy. What I want to sort of point out is that this legislation, in my opinion, is just a complete misfire. Let's, first of all, remind everyone that there are over 670 association health plans existing in America today. The notion that the Affordable Care Act somehow is smothering or stifling association health plans is, in fact, just factually false. There are many that are in business, providing coverage, as has been said by some of the prior speakers, for people in industries like restaurants, et cetera. Again, we are not talking about some existential threat that is out there in terms of association health plans today. The guts of this bill--and it is quite extraordinary coming from, again, the Republican Party--is to preempt State Governments from having any say over the solvency and the benefit design of plans that operate under association health plans.…”