Political Quotes

“Madam President, I wish to speak about health insurance. We notice that nationally and back in our States, the angst over the Affordable Care Act--often derisively referred to as ObamaCare--has subsided. In part, that has occurred because more people are being covered. As a matter of fact, in the first tranche of signups of people who did not have insurance, over 8 million people--which exceeded the goal of 7 million--by the time the cutoff came for signing earlier this year, over 8 million people had signed up. And that was just a narrow population of those who wanted insurance but could not afford it. Then they had it available through the State exchanges or the Federal exchange in the States. Another part of the population that did not have health care was people who were actually in a low-income situation; therefore, there was no chance they could afford it. That is why we expanded Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act to up to 138 percent of poverty, which is a very low level of income. I believe, if I remember correctly, for a family of four, it is somewhere around $32,499 of annual income. Well, we can imagine that with a family of four, people can't even think about having the money to provide health insurance with that kind of limited income, and that brings them up to 138 percent of poverty.…”