Health Care

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, ObamaCare is collapsing. It is hurting more people than it is helping. It is forcing Americans to buy insurance they don't like, they don't need, and cannot afford. Premiums have increased by an average of 25 percent this year. Deductibles are skyrocketing. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. counties have only two or fewer insurers offering plans on their State's exchanges. Thirty-four percent fewer doctors and other healthcare providers accept ObamaCare insurance compared to private insurance. Congress must act decisively to protect the American people from this failed law.

The American Health Care Act is an important step in this process.

While not perfect, it moves us significantly in the right direction, which is why The Wall Street Journal says that the legislation would be ``the most consequential social policy reform since the welfare overhaul of 1996.''
I am also encouraged that the committees of jurisdiction are, as we speak, entertaining amendments in regular order that will improve the legislation. But even without these amendments, the American Health Care Act is a dramatic improvement over ObamaCare.

The bill ends job-killing individual and employer mandates. It cuts $1 trillion of ObamaCare's worst taxes, including the medical device tax, the health care insurance tax, and the Medicare payroll tax. It blocks Federal funds from Planned Parenthood. It reduces regulations so that individuals can buy plans that they want and can afford. And it reforms Medicaid by returning power to the States.

Some have criticized this bill because it lacks certain important reforms that will bend the cost curve down, such as association health plans, interstate competition, reforms to facilitate more competition and choice in the private health insurance marketplace, and medical liability reform. These are important reforms, and I support them.

In fact, I have introduced a medical liability reform bill that would deal with the doctor shortage and junk lawsuits and reduce costs.

Unfortunately, these reforms are not eligible for inclusion in the reconciliation bill under the rules of the Senate. But it is important to note that this is just the first phase in a three-phase process to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

This bill is a crucial and necessary first step in a step-by-step process. In stark contrast to ObamaCare, we are actually reading the bill, and we invite the American people to do the same-- readthebill.gop. I hope all Americans will take this opportunity to learn more about this bill and offer their feedback.

Mr. Speaker, we have tried to put Washington in charge of health care. Now it is time to put patients, their doctors, and their families in charge.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, last month, a hospital worker in Paducah, Kentucky, applied for a loan of $38,500 to finance a manufactured home.

He had an 8 percent down payment. His monthly income was $2,200 per month--plenty to cover the all-in housing costs of $670 per month. The payment for his own home would have been less than what he was spending on rent, but he was unable to get financing. He contacted his local banks and credit unions, but they did not finance manufactured homes.

This hospital worker from Kentucky can't get financing because of the very entity that was created to protect consumers--the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That is right, the Federal Government is protecting people right out of homeownership. Consumers are protected so much they can't even purchase a manufactured home.

Lenders have stopped making manufactured housing loans because of the Dodd-Frank Act and CFPB regulations. Even worse, current owners are having to sell their homes below market value to cash buyers because potential buyers can't find financing.

And this isn't just anecdotal. Government statistics prove that CFPB rules have prevented credit-worthy consumers from accessing affordable financing that would allow them to purchase manufactured homes.
According to 2014 HMDA data, manufactured home loan volume for loans under $75,000 decreased in the first year that these regulations went into effect.

This is proof that many lenders who were previously willing to make manufactured home loans are no longer capable of doing so under Dodd- Frank. These are exactly the kinds of top-down bureaucratic Federal regulations that my constituents in rural Kentucky are fed up with.

The CFPB has the authority to make adjustments to its requirements, but it has refused to act even when the data shows that consumers are being harmed.

A bipartisan group of Members of this body came together in the last Congress to do what the CFPB has refused to do. The House voted three times to make these changes so that people seeking to purchase manufactured homes would have access to financing.

I invite my colleagues to join me in this fight for consumers. Let's work together to make these changes to the CFPB and to their regulations and stop Federal bureaucrats from hurting modest income Americans who need access to affordable housing and deserve access to the American Dream of homeownership.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source