Political Quotes

“Mr. President, while we have a lull in the debate, I want to take an opportunity to talk about healthcare. Since we had an utter inability of the House of Representatives to come together on any kind of healthcare bill, this Senator would suggest that instead of the mantra ``repeal and replace,'' since now that seems to be dead, why don't we take the existing law that has provided a lot of things for the average citizen? For the average person in my State of Florida, it means a great deal to have the availability of health insurance, which they never had and can now afford. There need to be fixes to the law known as the Affordable Care Act that was passed several years ago. Indeed, one of those fixes could be a kind of ``smoothing fund,'' that as the insurance companies vie for this business on the State exchanges, they would be able to have this fund as a resource for them to get over some of the humps--also, certainly for some of the insureds. Just because you are at 400 percent of poverty and therefore no longer eligible for some of the subsidies to enable you to buy health insurance--and, by the way, for a single individual, that is only about $47,000 a year of income--the person who makes $47,000, $50,000 a year can't afford to go out and spend $8,000, $10,000, $11,000 on a health insurance policy. We need to adjust that--in other words, fix that as well. There needs to be an additional fix of a subsidy for the people who are just over 400 percent of poverty.…”