Roy Blunt: “I have listened carefully to the Presiding Officer's comments earlier and the comments of others who have talked about…”

“I have listened carefully to the Presiding Officer's comments earlier and the comments of others who have talked about the importance of passing this bill and drawing focus again to the health care plan that is just not working. It is not working. The State exchanges are failing. They are sort of fleeing to a bigger Federal exchange, and the insurance companies are fleeing the Federal exchange as well as the State exchanges. They are moving out of the family market. They are moving out of the individual market. The biggest health insurance company announced recently that they were likely to abandon this particular process next year. The plan where the insurance companies that had a profit would use some of that profit to offset the loss of other companies isn't working because, as others have well explained, the incentive for young, healthy people to be part of this plan is just not there. The premiums are too high, and the deductibles are too high. There is no reason to be part of this, and there should be nothing new here. The failures of this plan were almost guaranteed when the House and Senate, under the control of our friends on the other side, decided they were going to pass the bill the Senate passed when there were 60 Democrats here to vote for a bill. It doesn't matter how flawed that bill was. It doesn't matter how many problems were in that bill.…”