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Floor Speech
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I support this proposal and would like Americans to know why.
Since before Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term, Senate Democrats have known that this is a healthcare problem for millions of American families that cries out for fixing.
Again and again, we asked our Republican colleagues to work with us, sit with us, and negotiate improvements in a black-letter law that makes Americans' healthcare better for American families. Again and again we were turned down.
So on the Senate Finance Committee, everybody knew this day was coming, long before Donald Trump took the oath of office. Now the crisis is here, and I am here to say our door is still open.
The Senate Finance Committee has a track record of getting bipartisan work done. Senator Crapo and I wrote a bill that transformed how pharmacy benefit managers work in Medicare. It passed the Finance Committee 26 to nothing. Despite this track record, Republicans still refuse to sit down and even have a conversation about how to help these Americans afford their premiums. That is why we have all been out on the floor today.
I am in a fight for Bart and Carla from Eugene, OR, a few years away from Medicare. They have had long careers as a carpenter and a teacher. They worked hard. Now the rug is being pulled out from under them. They have been paying $400 a month in premiums. Without an extension of the credits, they are going to pay $2,200 a month. That is an increase they just can't handle.
My Republican colleagues have provided a host of excuses about why they can't work with us, but the excuses don't hold water. For example, there have been allegations of fraud--the same straw man that they used to make the largest Medicaid cuts in history.
Republicans pretend they are fighting for us, but, really, they are just pushing up costs and kicking working people off their health insurance. So to, again, try to bring everybody together, we introduced legislation that would prevent bad-actor brokers from enrolling or switching people into plans without their knowledge. That way we could slap fraudsters with criminal penalties when they harm consumers. On the Republican side, after all the talk, no cosponsors.
Finally, there has been an excuse that says this policy was created during COVID, and now that the pandemic is passed, the tax credits ought to lapse too. It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see Republicans coming down to the floor, for example, to say that telehealth benefits for seniors on Medicare should expire because they were created during the pandemic.
This is something I feel strongly about. As my friend from Minnesota knows, I wrote that with the late Orrin Hatch on a bipartisan basis. And the first Trump administration used them to great success.
Just because a good healthcare policy was created in a crisis moment doesn't mean it ought to be ripped away from Americans once the crisis is passed, especially when ending that policy would create a new crisis for over 20 million people who no longer will be able to afford good quality healthcare.
Those are just a couple of the Republican excuses. But the bottom line is, over here, we want to protect families' healthcare and keep premiums from rocketing into the stratosphere. Unfortunately, the Republicans haven't shared that view.
My hope is--and we have had an important conversation. I appreciate the leadership of Senator Klobuchar. We have had an important conversation about trying to get our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to do the right thing. Join us. Join us, as we have done so often in the Senate Finance Committee, and lower Americans' healthcare costs.
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