Affordable Care Act

Floor Speech

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, hopefully, we can move on. After a
Presidential election, two Supreme Court cases, 60-plus votes to repeal
the Affordable Care Act in the House of Representatives, and endless
debates here in the Senate, maybe now is the moment where Republicans
will choose to close the books on trying to strip away from millions of
Americans the benefits they have received from the Affordable Care Act.
This is an important day for over 10 million Americans who have health
care right now because of the Affordable Care Act. I would argue it is
an important day as well for the separation of powers and the
recognition that it is the legislative body that sets the policy for
this country.

I just wanted to come down to the floor for a few minutes to express
my hope and my desire that proponents of the Affordable Care Act--such
as myself, Senator Stabenow, and Senator Baldwin--who have come down to
the floor over and over during the course of the last 3 years don't
have to do it anymore. I would love to come down to the floor and talk
about the need to fix our transportation system or the need for mental
health reform. I would love to talk about tax reform. I have come down
to the floor over and over to defend the Affordable Care Act simply
because it has been perpetually under attack despite the fact that its
successes are now unparalleled.

Justice Roberts, in the decision today--I won't quote from it at
length--said: ``Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve
health insurance markets, not to destroy them.'' That is essentially
the operative phrase in today's decision. We passed the Affordable Care
Act to improve health insurance marketplaces, not to destroy them, and
that is what it has done. It has improved marketplaces all across the
country. Why? Because people have voted with their feet. The 10 to 11
million people who signed up for either expanded Medicare, Medicaid
coverage or these exchanges have shown us that the law works as
intended because they didn't stay out or deem it to be unaffordable.
They stepped in and bought coverage.

We should now be in the business of perfecting this law. None of us,
frankly, think that this law is perfect. Many of us are open to
conversations about how to make it better and how to perfect it. Now
that the Supreme Court has completely shut the door to a judicial
repeal of the act, and after having debate after debate, hopefully it
is clear that there are not the votes--nor the support, obviously, in
the executive branch--to repeal the act, and we can move on to
something else.

This is an old chart of mine that I have in the Chamber. I brought
this down to the floor several months ago when a colleague of ours
suggested that the administration shouldn't be celebrating the
successes of the Affordable Care Act, as if people receiving health
insurance for the first time in their life wasn't something to
celebrate, as if 17 million children with preexisting conditions who
will never have their health care taken away from them wasn't something
to celebrate, and as if 9.4 million senior citizens who are saving $15
billion on drugs isn't something to celebrate. I get excited when I
talk about the Affordable Care Act not only because it is a really
sober and important topic but because when I talk to my constituents
back home, they are excited. They are bubbling over with enthusiasm.
Those of them who never had the chance to get health coverage before
the Affordable Care Act and those who worried every single night, sick
that their child wouldn't be able to live a normal life because their
existence would be obsessed with whether they were able to cover their
complicated illness with insurance, are bubbling over with enthusiasm.

There are millions of people who are celebrating this decision today,
and it is a sober day because, hopefully, we will be able to have a
conversation about how we can move on to another topic. But it is a day
to celebrate, not only for the 6.4 million Americans, first and
foremost, who would have had their insurance taken away by an adverse
decision, but for all Americans who would have been caught up in an
insurance death spiral had the decision gone the other way.

I hope we can limit our discussions about the Affordable Care Act to
ways in which we can make it work better.

So I hope we can now spend more time talking about other topics that
matter to this country. I hope the House of Representatives decides to
give up this obsession with repealing the Affordable Care Act, which is
something that is simply not going to happen. And for its opponents out
in the field, the Supreme Court has shut the doors to a judicial repeal
of the Affordable Care Act today.

I think of a lot of stories when I think about what the Affordable
Care Act has meant to the people of Connecticut. We have cut our
uninsurance rates in half in Connecticut. We have one of the best
running exchanges in the country. But one of the simplest stories is
the only one I will convey as I wrap up this morning.

I was at the community pool that my family goes to in Cheshire, CT,
and I was in the pool with my then 2-year-old just shortly after
passage of the Affordable Care Act.

A young man about my age came up to me, and he said: Listen, I am
sorry, Mr. Murphy, to disturb you; I know you are here with your son,
but I have a little boy, too, and he has a congenital heart problem.
Every single day since he has been born, I have worried that he
wouldn't get to live out his dreams because his life decisions would be
dictated by whether or not he could get insurance to cover all of the
complicated health care needs he is going to have and that would be
determinative of his path in life, not his dreams, his desires for
himself.

He said: I get it that this is going to help a lot of people in very
practical and economic ways, but I just want to thank you because now I
sleep better at night knowing that my son is going to be able to get
covered, that my son is going to be able to lead a relatively normal
life, and that he can be whatever he wants to be.

That is the benefit the Affordable Care Act brings people. It is not
just practical. It is not just economic. It is not just the battle over
whether somebody has health insurance. It is psychological. It is peace
of mind.

The Supreme Court protected 6.4 million people from losing their
health insurance today, but they also protected tens of millions of
patients and parents and sons and daughters and grandparents from
losing that peace of mind that comes with the protections from an
Affordable Care Act that is working.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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