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Floor Speech
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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, all of us are back from being at home for the past 30 days. In my visit in Vermont, my time in Vermont visiting with Vermonters, one issue that came up over and over again is incredible concern about healthcare.
The cost of healthcare is beyond affordability, and this is really an existential moment for our healthcare system.
Let me just talk about that in general but also with respect to the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Under that legislation, 45,000 Vermonters are going to lose healthcare, literally lose it altogether. More than 26,000 Vermonters will lose access to premium subsidies which make the Affordable Care Act plans more affordable.
Just let me give an example that I found shocking. A family of four in Vermont who makes $82,000 a year--right now, their premium is about $7,000 under the Affordable Care Act. That premium will increase by $23,600.
So the premium will then be $30,648. They have done nothing. They have done nothing, and they have no control over what the healthcare expense will be. But their premium, when they wake up on January 1, is going to go up $23,600, and that is on income of $82,000. And, by the way, Vermont does not have high income.
And in that respect, I know you are concerned about your folks in West Virginia.
That is not affordable. It just isn't affordable, and the citizens have no control over what those costs are. They just have to pay the bill.
The other thing that is happening is that our rural hospitals, they are going to lose $1.7 billion because of lost revenue. All those folks that lose Medicaid coverage are going to show up and get care. And our community hospitals, they will provide care for folks who are sick. But if they don't get paid, they can only do that so long before they go out of business.
And our rural hospitals are like the rural hospitals in West Virginia. They are like the rural hospitals all around the country. They are operating on a very thin financial margin. They are in great jeopardy. So we are going to have rural hospitals that close.
The other issue, we are all concerned about substance use disorder. Because of the cuts in Medicaid, about 8,000 Vermonters are at risk of losing access to the treatment that has been very effective. For the first time in years, the numbers of deaths has been going down, not up. And much of that is attributable to the fact that services were available to people who wanted them, needed them, and took advantage of them.
You know, this is not me talking. This is Vermonters talking. I had a healthcare listening session. And the thing that folks, just as I mentioned, were really concerned about, worried about, is healthcare. And it was everyday care, care for their kids, care and access to healthcare, including care for new mothers and women who are giving birth. And we are in the process of having one of our hospitals, for financial reasons, have to shut down, a much utilized and much revered birthing center.
So my view is we should repeal the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. It is not a working-families tax plan. I mean, unless you mean taxes are what we do when we increase the premiums that our families have to pay.
My view, we should absolutely be passing policies that help working families, and I have got bipartisan bills to do that. But we can't move forward without addressing these real threats to our healthcare system. And the repeal of healthcare provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill-- that is what we have to do.
My longtime preference is that we have a healthcare system that covers everybody--regardless of age, regardless of income. It is what every other nation does. What we have is a system that is kind of a single-payer system in a variety of ways you can have it. But what we have is a system where we try to control costs by literally taking healthcare insurance away from people, as if taking away their healthcare insurance means they won't get sick. They are going to get sick.
We have got to support Medicare and Medicaid. We need to extend the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credits so those Vermont families and families in every State across the country--red State, blue State-- don't get hammered with these multithousand-dollar premium increases.
I serve on the Finance Committee, and tomorrow I am grateful to Chairman Crapo for inviting Secretary Kennedy in to report on ``progress in the healthcare system.''
I don't have that view of his tenure. My view, Secretary Kennedy has undermined, severely, vaccine research and vaccine delivery. My view, his policies have undermined rural health. My view, Secretary Kennedy should resign.
We need a healthcare Secretary and a White House that is actually committed to practical ways to lower cost of healthcare, and we need leadership that cares about the very real and very painful structural issues that are making our healthcare system unaffordable and inefficient and out of reach for so many people. And that is true whether you are a lower income person who gets Medicaid benefits, you are a senior who gets your well-earned Medicare benefits, you are a private family trying to buy your own healthcare, or you are an employer where you really care about your workers--you want to provide employer-sponsored healthcare but you are getting hammered with these 10-, 15-, 25-percent premium increases.
Healthcare is an essential concern of every single American family, and the concern is that it costs too much, access is too difficult, and the provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill have set us back. They have not moved us ahead.
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