On the recordJuly 9, 2019
I rise today in support of the Affordable Care Act and to discuss the devastating impact its potential elimination would have on rural families and rural communities. My State, Virginia, has so many rural communities, and in that, I am with every other Member of this body, and I want to talk specifically about them. The Trump administration has sought for years to end the Affordable Care Act using every tool available. They have worked on that task here in Congress to repeal it and sabotage it and even dismantle it in the court system. Today marks another milestone in that deeply troubling effort. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in a case that could strike down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. If the ACA were struck down, families and communities around the country would bear life-altering consequences, and the healthcare system would be thrown into chaos. Tens of millions of Americans would lose healthcare coverage and protections for preexisting conditions, among the countless other consumer protections that have been put in place by the ACA. A number of my colleagues are going to be on the floor this afternoon speaking about particular aspects of this that trouble them. I want to focus on one in particular: how important the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion is to rural America and how much is at stake for those communities should the Affordable Care Act be eliminated.…
