Affordable Care Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, we now are in about the sixth month of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. We have over 11 million people who have received health care--who previously had not been able to receive it--either through the private exchanges, which have signed up 4 million people all across the country; through the expansion of Medicaid, which has reached millions more; or through all of the young people who are able to stay on their parents' plans until they are 26 years old.
Taxpayers are saving money. In fact, CBO has redone their estimates for the 10-year period after the passage of the Affordable Care Act to suggest that we are now going to save $1.2 trillion on Federal health care spending, in large part because of the reforms in the Affordable Care Act.
Across this country millions of Americans who had been kept out of the ranks of the insured because of a preexisting condition now have access to health care, and tens of millions of seniors are paying less for their health care because they get checkups for free and they are able to access prescription drugs for 50 percent or less than the original cost when they reach that doughnut hole. So the Affordable Care Act is changing lives.
When you reorder one-sixth of the American economy, there are going to be bumps along the road. No one should come to the floor--even those of us who are the most vocal proponents of the law--and suggest there are not going to be some people who are not going to have the perfect experience. Of course there is no excuse for the way in which the Web site operated for the first several months. But it is time for proponents of this law to tell the real story, and the real story is that the Affordable Care Act is working. It is working for millions of Americans who now have access to health care. It is working for taxpayers who are spending less than ever before as you look at annual rates of growth in Federal health care spending.
Today and this week my colleagues and I are focusing on the benefits for one specific group of patients, one specific set of families all across this country, and those are patients and families dealing with cancer diagnoses.
So I will start this off--I will be joined later by Senator Stabenow and some of my other colleagues--and I want to talk first about a family in Indiana. I will talk about some families in Connecticut as well, but the Treinens have a story that is, frankly, not unique. They had insurance and they thought they had really good insurance. They didn't pay too much attention to the lifetime cap of $1 million that was in their insurance policy because they just figured, as a relatively healthy family, there was no way they were ever going to spend $1 million on health care over the course of their time on that insurance plan.
But as millions of families across this country know, cancer can interrupt your plans, and that is what happened to the Treinens. Their doctors diagnosed their teenage son Michael in 2007 with an aggressive form of leukemia. The treatment called for ten doses of chemotherapy that cost $10,000 per dose. A 56-day stay in an Intensive Care Unit alone cost about $400,000. So Michael and his family reached that $1 million lifetime maximum in less than 1 year, and it was then left to this brave family to go out and raise money in solicitations in their neighborhood, in their community and all across the country, which miraculously allowed them to bring in $865,000 in 6 days to keep their son's treatment going.
Needless to say, that avenue is not available to every family. But due to their ingenuity and their passion, the Treinens were able to raise almost $1 million from private donors in order to keep their son's treatment going. But the story doesn't end well, however, for the Treinens. Even though money came in from all over the United States, and as far away as places such as Germany, Michael's cancer eventually stopped responding to chemotherapy and he died May 25, before he could receive the transplant they all hoped would save his life.
The reality is that insurance companies have been getting away with this practice for years--lifetime or annual limits that for 105 million Americans were preventing them from receiving care when they really got sick. That is what insurance really is supposed to be for. For those of us who buy insurance, we get it in the hopes that should we get very sick, that insurance plan will be there to help us. But with annual and lifetime limits, when people got really sick, especially with cancer diagnoses, that help wasn't there.
Tom Bocaccio, who is a retired police officer in Newington, CT, is still dealing with the consequences of lifetime caps. His wife past away after an 8-year struggle with adrenal cancer. After her death, the husband she left behind was saddled with a $1.5 million bill because the Bocaccios, over that 8-year period of fighting cancer, had exceeded their lifetime cap. That changes Tom's life in a myriad of ways. He has lost his wife, and there is no way to describe the pain that comes with that, especially after that brave, courageous battle of almost a decade, but now his entire life is upended by the fact that he has a $1.5 million bill he has to pay, and he doesn't have the resources to do that.
So first and foremost, for cancer patients all across this country, 105 million Americans no longer face lifetime limits on health care benefits. For cancer patients, not only does that deliver financial security, but it delivers mental and psychological security as well--to know in the midst of dealing with this diagnosis and all the pain that comes with confronting this disease head on, they do not also have to worry about skimping on treatments, about cutting back on hospital stays that might harm the recovery or treatment of the patient simply because they are trying not to get above that annual or lifetime limit.
The benefits to cancer patients extend beyond just that protection on lifetime and annual limits. In addition, cancer patients are going to be able to keep their health care because of the ban on discrimination against families and individuals with preexisting conditions.
I have spoken about the Berger family many times on this floor. They are a family that explains exactly why we need this protection. The Bergers, from Meriden, CT, had a son who was diagnosed with cancer during the 2-week period in which the husband, through which the family had insurance, didn't have a job. He switched jobs, and during that 2-week period in which he was waiting to get insurance through his new job, their son was diagnosed with cancer.
The new insurance policy decided it was a preexisting condition. The Bergers had to pay every dime of that treatment and they lost everything. They lost their savings, their home. Their lives were transformed because of the misfortune of having a cancer diagnosis at the wrong time.
No family anywhere in the country dealing with a cancer diagnosis will ever have to go through what the Bergers went through because here ever after the law of this land says that if you have a preexisting condition, you cannot be discriminated against.
There are all sorts of other benefits that matter, whether it be the fact you don't have to pay for preventive health care any longer so you can get a checkup without cost or clinical trials are now covered which many cancer patients enjoy the benefit of. Life changed for cancer patients and families dealing with cancer when the Affordable Care Act passed.
Senator Stabenow, myself, and others had a press conference earlier this week in which we heard the story of David Weis, a senior at Georgetown University who was diagnosed days before his 19th birthday with thyroid lymphatic cancer. David talks about the difference the Affordable Care Act makes for him, not only in financial terms but in terms of how he thinks about his future. David now can go out and get a job, search for and pursue a career based on what he wants to do with his life rather than based on what job will provide him with adequate benefits to treat his cancer should it reoccur.
I have a constituent who talks about it the same way. He was 14 when he was diagnosed with a form of leukemia. He went through treatment for over 3 years. His family now knows that with the Affordable Care Act--because he is only covered on his mom's policy until he is 26--after he ages out of his mom's plan, he will be able to pursue his dreams no matter what kind of insurance plan his prospective employer has.
What we have learned over the years is there is a connection between the mind and the body. If you are stressed out about things such as how you are going to pay for treatment of your disease, it does have an effect on your body's ability to fight that disease. Unfortunately, for millions of families dealing with cancer, their treatment has been restrained, their body's recovery has been curtailed because they are obsessively--and appropriately--always worried about what will happen if their insurance runs out.
The ACA says never again. No family will have to worry because that will be guaranteed, and discriminatory policies of annual and lifetime limits disappear.
I will end with the notion that it is important to remember every time our Republican friends come down to the floor and talk about how awful they believe the Affordable Care Act is, their proposal is to return cancer patients and families dealing with cancer back to the reality in which they had lifetime limits which ended their coverage--for this family I talked about from Indiana, after only several months--and they want to go back to the days in which families such as the Bergers lose everything, their savings, their home, because of a mistimed cancer diagnosis.
This week the House of Representatives voted for the 50th time to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act. I was a Member of that body for 6 years, and I probably participated in about 40 of those votes. Despite the fact I heard lots of my Republican friends come down to the floor and say: We are voting to repeal and replace, they never voted once to replace the Affordable Care Act because their agenda is not to replace it. Their agenda is simply to repeal it and go back to the days in which cancer patients were treated with this kind of carelessness.
Our colleagues on the Democratic side who voted for the Affordable Care Act understand there are places where it can be better. We understand there is a process of perfecting it. But we understand--because of families such as the Barrows, because of families such as the Weises, the Treinens, and the Bergers--for cancer patients and the families who love them, they know the ACA is working, and they know they never want to go back to the days in which their lives were put in jeopardy by a health care system which didn't work for them.
I yield the floor.
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