On the recordJuly 24, 2017
let me open my remarks by saying that from the very beginning of this ill-starred healthcare misadventure the Republicans have been on, Democrats have over and over again offered to help and to participate. Over and over again, we have spoken to, for instance, Chairman Alexander on the HELP Committee, saying: Give us a shot. Try something. We can do this. You have talked all these years about regular order. How many times have we heard the majority leader say that regular order is the way to go and talk about how important the Senate is because it follows regular order? It looks as though all of that was nothing but a lot of bunkum because when he had the chance to come here and actually trust the Senate to work through regular order, what did he do? The very first day, he jammed through reconciliation to open a purely partisan pathway to undoing ObamaCare. Well, people have discovered that a lot of what they thought was their good healthcare is ObamaCare. So people on Medicaid, people whose private policies now don't have preexisting condition limits, caps on how much can be spent in a year or in a lifetime, folks who will get their money through the exchange, suddenly they have all discovered ``Oh my gosh, that was ObamaCare. Don't take that away from me.'' That is one of the reasons we see all of the groups who come here concerned about healthcare lined up against this bill.…





