Political Quotes

“I thank our colleagues who have worked so hard on this legislation to try and rescue these failing insurance markets. We learned yesterday, I think most of Iowa now will not have a single insurer left on the exchanges. If you are one of the people out there in the one-out-of-three counties where people only have one option for insurance, what we are trying to do here is fix this market so you actually have insurance to cover you. We believe that in going forward with this piece of legislation not only do we give more flexibility to States to innovate, they care about the people in their States. I know my home State of Oregon does. Yet they are facing a shortfall right now that this legislation would provide over $320 million to help fill. One of their proposals is to kick 350,000 people off of Medicaid. This would help fill the gap: $320 million in the next 2 years to fill an $882 million shortfall they have. But this is a problem across the country. What we are trying to do here is reform ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act, in a way that will work going into the future. Otherwise, people are going to be left with not only enormous rate increases in the premiums, but also you have seen an explosion in the cost of what they have to pay out of pocket. I have had people in my district say: Look, I am outside of that area where I get a subsidy, and I am paying full price. Our premiums have gone up 50 percent in the last 2 years.…”