On the recordJanuary 9, 2017
Mr. President, I am here tonight to join my colleague the senior Senator from New Mexico and all my other colleagues on the Senate floor to stand up for hundreds of thousands of my constituents in New Mexico who will lose their health care coverage if Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw our Nation's health care system into chaos. It is absolutely criminal for Republicans to strip millions of their health care without even a conceptual replacement plan in place. To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I want to make it clear that ``we will fix it later'' simply doesn't cut it. They promised repeal and replace, and now they are giving us repeal and run, and that will cause chaos in our health care system. In my home State of New Mexico, according to the Urban Institute, an estimated 266,000 people will lose their health care coverage. This is not a change to their plan or a different premium. They will lose their coverage in its entirety. Thousands more of our State's 2 million residents will lose access to birth control and other preventive services and Medicare prescription drug coverage. Nearly everyone will be subjected to higher costs for lower quality insurance, especially those with preexisting conditions. Dismantling our health care system would also put at risk many of the gains we made in protecting the 860,000 New Mexicans who have preexisting conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.…





