Obamacare

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for telling the stories of people in California, which are not unlike the stories in Connecticut--an exchange that is working, a flood of people signing up way above expectations from where we originally thought the numbers would be. I thank her as well for pointing out what is the reality--which is that over 40 times Republicans in the House of Representatives and in the Senate have voted to repeal the health care reform law. Even well over the last 5 years, using over and over this mantra of repeal and replace, they have offered absolutely no replacement.

There is a story in one of the trade publications this morning saying that the Republicans were just going to change their strategy. Instead of piling on repeal vote after repeal vote, they are now just going to come down to the floor and use their committee chairmanships to simply criticize the law, and shelve, for the time being, their incessant efforts to try to repeal the law entirely.

But make no mistake, that continues to be their intention. While they are going to come down to the floor of the Senate, as they did this morning, and tell a handful of anecdotes about people who are dissatisfied with the law, their true intention is to get rid of the entire law and go back to a world in which 30 million people in this country had no access to insurance; that if you got sick, you would lose your insurance; a world in which insurance companies essentially set the rules of the game, to the disadvantage of providers and patients. That is what the agenda is here, to repeal the law and go back to the status quo, which is unacceptable--the highest number of uninsured citizens in the industrialized world, the most expensive health care system by a factor of two, compared to all of our G-20 competitors.

I get it that there are people who are unhappy, and the President is going to make an announcement later today which is going to set a path forward to try to fix one of the issues with the law with respect to cancelled policies. But I will share a couple of other stories about what the reality of the old system was.

Kyle is today about 11 years old, but when we first came into my office he was an 8-year-old living with hemophilia. Kyle is an amazingly brave young man who inspires courage in his parents. But Kyle has to get three to four injections a week in order to treat his hemophilia, and each one of those injections costs $3,000.

His plan prior to health care reform had a feature in it that most people didn't know was included in their health care plan. That was a lifetime cap on the amount of money his health insurance company would pay for his care. Because Kyle was mounting up bills in the tens of thousands of dollars every week, his family was going to hit that cap very quickly and then be on the hook for those $3,000 injections that Kyle needs to take three to four times a week. That was going to bankrupt Kyle's family. They thank their lucky stars that we passed this health care reform law, because now their insurance has to be real insurance. It protects them against their lifetime exposure of high health care costs.

Think about the Burgers from Meriden, CT. Betty and her husband had insurance their entire life, except for a 1-week period of time when Betty's husband switched jobs. During that 1-week period of time, their son was diagnosed with cancer, and because that was then a preexisting condition, her husband's new insurance plan wouldn't cover their son's treatment. Their story, unfortunately, can be told millions of times over across this country--because the Burgers went bankrupt. They lost their savings, they lost their house, and they lost everything as they mounted up huge bills to pay for their son's cancer treatments, just because he got diagnosed during a 1-week period of time in which their family had no health care insurance. That practice ends with the implementation of this health care law. No sick person can be denied insurance simply because of a preexisting condition, simply because a diagnosis happened to happen during a small window of time in which their family didn't have insurance.

I get it that the road has been a little bumpy as we have implemented this new health care system. But it is nothing compared to the bumps which have been encountered by millions of families across this country who have been abused by a system which simply does not work.

If our biggest problem is that enough people who don't have insurance aren't signing up quick enough for insurance, that is a problem I will accept because it is a problem we can fix. If all we are talking about here is just the pace at which people are going from uninsured to insured, then we can fix that. We can fix that because we know the product is good.

Senator Boxer talked about the Massachusetts experience, where during the first month of their enrollment for the Massachusetts exchange only 0.3 percent of the total signed up during that month. Why? Because people take their time. This is not an easy decision, to sign up for health care. But in Connecticut, where we have an exchange which has been up and running and a Web site that is working, in the first month our number wasn't 0.3 percent. We enrolled nearly 10 percent of our expected total in the first 30 days.

Here is what people say about their experience with Connecticut's exchange. One person said: This is a great resource for Connecticut residents to apply for health coverage thanks to the health care law.

Another said: I chose Access Health because I have been denied in the past by other carriers before this law changed.

Another said: Thank you so much for this health care law. I haven't been insured in a decade. I am so, so thankful.

Another said: Thank you for this program. I lost my job a year ago and couldn't find anything that I can afford in health coverage before this law passed.

Finally, another said: Thank you. This law is helpful and appreciated. God bless America, and thank you President Obama.

The President is going to make an announcement which will paint a path forward for the relatively small number of Americans--4 percent--who get their insurance in the individual market, some of which have had their plans canceled. But the solution with respect to the timing of enrollment is not to abandon the law, as is the real agenda of people on this floor. The solution is to fix the problem so that, like in Connecticut, more people across this country can for the first time have access to affordable quality health care.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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