Political Quotes

“I rise today to offer a few comments about the House Republican bill that was just unveiled yesterday. Those who have been promoting it or those who have been working on this issue for a couple of weeks are claiming it is a new healthcare plan or a new comprehensive healthcare proposal--in essence, by their argument, a replacement if the Affordable Care Act were repealed. I disagree. I don't believe in any way it is a plan. It might be a bill, but I think a better description of it in terms of its impact would be that it is a scheme, not a plan. It is a scheme that will roll back coverage gains from the Affordable Care Act, which is better known by a longer name: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Kaiser--one of the great institutions that track healthcare data and healthcare policy--told us that there are 156 million Americans with employer-sponsored coverage. Those Americans didn't have much protection before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with regard to preexisting conditions or annual lifetime limits--a whole series of protections for people that were not there before that. This scheme, as I am calling it, will not only roll back coverage gains in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, in the process it will also devastate the Medicaid Program, leaving many of the most vulnerable Americans behind.…”