Spencer Cox: “Mr. Speaker, we are here because of patients. Patients are not getting care. Trauma centers are closing. Emergency rooms…”

“Mr. Speaker, we are here because of patients. Patients are not getting care. Trauma centers are closing. Emergency rooms are closing. OB-GYNs are leaving their practice. Women are without health care. That is why we are here. On June 30 of this year, Methodist Hospital in south Philadelphia, which had been delivering babies since 1892, closed its doors. They closed their maternity ward and they stopped delivering babies. This is going on all over the country. In Nevada, in all of southern Nevada, now, there is no trauma center. Southern Nevada's only trauma center closed its doors in July. Las Vegas is now the only city of its size without any care for such people in these circumstances. Our intention is to ensure that no more patients are denied the care they deserve. We have heard there was a Democratic amendment that should have been made in order that would have ensured that savings from this bill, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates at $14 billion, $14 billion more available to go into health care, into hospitals, into Medicare givebacks, into quality of care, that we should have had this amendment that guaranteed that savings went to doctors. Somebody should ask whether the doctors supported that amendment, because they did not.”