Affordable Care Act

Floor Speech

Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I want to share with you another letter I received from a constituent about the Affordable Care Act. He writes:

About 9 months ago, my wife was forced to leave her job, in part because they wanted her to travel to Boston twice a week and the responsibilities to care for our daughter who has cerebral palsy made that impossible. Our health insurance was from her employment.

We went on to COBRA, which cost about $1,400 per month. Waiting to have permanent insurance that did not have a termination date, we contacted Anthem Blue Cross for a quote for private insurance.

We were told that my wife was uninsurable for 10 years because she had been treated for depression a few years ago when our daughter was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and we were told she would require spinal cord surgery to possibly walk.

They then said, because of her condition, the cost for only my daughter and I was almost $4,000 per month. The burden for the last 6 months was overwhelming. Insurance brokers informed us that only the Affordable Health Care Act could help us.

Yesterday my wife signed up for health insurance for all of us. Due to our income, we do not qualify for assistance and we were never looking for any. All we wanted was affordable insurance for my family. The policy we selected will end up costing about what our COBRA payment is, $1,400, depending on how much deductible we end up using, which is all we ever wanted.

I know the only reason our family is safe is because of the President, who cares more about people like us than the CEO of Anthem Blue Cross or Aetna.

Mr. Speaker, I receive calls and letters like this all the time. It is why I worked so hard to pass the Affordable Care Act in the first place.

This is a transformative piece of legislation, a law that provides more security for the middle class and a better, healthy quality of life for the entire community. It empowers patients and doctors again and puts them, and not insurers, back at the center of care. It makes important, long-overdue reforms that most people just take as common sense.

But for 3 years now, this House Republican majority has been trying to roll the clock back and bring back the bad old days when insurance companies could discriminate against people with preexisting conditions, even children with preexisting conditions, once again. They want to see women pay more for the same coverage than men, be denied coverage because they survived breast cancer, were a victim of domestic violence, or had a child by cesarean section. They want to see small businesses lose tax credits and seniors' health care and drug costs continue to rise at staggering rates.

But we are not going to go back. The Affordable Care Act is already making a profound difference for individuals and families in need. It is time to stop with the partisan political games and let it work for families who desperately need to have health care coverage and insurance that they can't afford.

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