Dick Durbin: “I listened carefully to the statement just made by the Republican leader, Senator McConnell of Kentucky, in which he…”

“I listened carefully to the statement just made by the Republican leader, Senator McConnell of Kentucky, in which he promised concrete ideas, real hope, change, job-related approaches, free enterprise--giving free enterprise a chance, trying to deal with putting America back to work. Then he gave us three examples. I might say to the Senator that I am familiar with all three because none of these are new. We have heard them over and over from the Republican side of the aisle. I will not go through each one of them. A couple of them relate to the Affordable Care Act. It is interesting to me that the House of Representatives has voted--I believe 45 times--to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Senator from Kentucky said we have to get back to free enterprise ideas. Let me tell you about the free enterprise idea when it came to health care. Before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the free enterprise idea was this: If you and your family were unfortunate enough to have a sick baby, if your wife was a cancer survivor, if your child had diabetes, the free enterprise answer was: We will raise the cost of health insurance to the point that you cannot afford it or we won't even offer it. That was the free enterprise idea on health insurance for millions of American families. There was another free enterprise idea out there in health care as well. It said: We are going to sell you health insurance policies that just protect you up to a certain amount of money.…”