Murphy: Trumpcare’s Three Prongs Are ‘Higher Costs, Less Care, Tax Cuts for the Rich.’

WASHINGTON, March 22 -- The office of Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., issued the following news release:

Before the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on Trumpcare, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate Wednesday in opposition to the short-sighted and irresponsible plan that would raise costs and reduce care, all to fund a big tax cut for drug and insurance companies and the rich. Click here to view video of Murphy's remarks.

"Mr. President, the House is still on schedule to vote tomorrow on a reform of one-sixth of the American economy that the American public has not seen. This is, frankly, unprecedented. This rush job, this attempt to jam through a massive rewrite of the American health care system, intentionally done so fast that the American public can't keep up with what is a truly disastrous piece of legislation. It's a train wreck. It's a dumpster fire. I can't come up with enough words to describe how bad this legislation is going to be for the American public," said Murphy.

As a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Murphy has repeatedly called on Congressional Republicans to stop their dangerous crusade to repeal the ACA and to work in a bipartisan way to improve the law. Yesterday, Murphy lambasted Senate HELP Committee Republicans for refusing to schedule hearings on Trumpcare, and how it would affect patients and families across the country.

Full text of Murphy's remarks is below:

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, the House is still on schedule to vote tomorrow on a reform of one-sixth of the American economy that the American public has not seen. This is, frankly, unprecedented. This rush job, this attempt to jam through a massive rewrite of the American health care system, intentionally done so fast that the American public can't keep up with what is a truly disastrous piece of legislation. It's a train wreck. It's a dumpster fire. I can't come up with enough words to describe how bad this legislation is going to be for the American public.

Bill Kristol, who is an icon of the conservative movement, who has been arguing for the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act since it was passed, tweeted out this. He said, "this health care bill doesn't A) lower costs, B) improve insurance, C) increase liberty, d) make health care better. So what's the point?"

And frankly, a lot of Americans and a lot of health care professionals and a lot of health care consumers are asking the same question. What problem does this bill solve? Whatever you want to call it, American Health Care Act, Trumpcare, Ryancare, what problem does this bill solve other than a political problem?

Clearly Republicans have a political problem. They promised for the last six years to repeal the Affordable Care Act and now they have control of the White House, the House, and the Senate, and they plan to make good on that promise. It does solve a political problem for the Republicans. The passage of the bill in the House and Senate would allow my Republican friends to say, we told you we were going to repeal the Affordable Care Act and we did it. But it doesn't solve any other problem in the American health care system.

It, frankly, makes the existing remaining problems even worse. And Republicans know this. Republicans know this because for six years we heard criticism - relentless criticism - that the Affordable Care Act was rammed through the process. It was passed without members knowing what was in it. Shoved down the throats of the American people. Well, imagine our surprise when the replacement to the Affordable Care Act is being pushed through at absolutely light-speed compared to the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

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And so you look at what happened when the Affordable Care Act was passed, and the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee that I sit on, the Finance Committee, the Ways and Means Committee held dozens of hearings, dozens of committee meetings. The HELP Committee in the Senate alone debated hundreds of amendments, accepted 130 Republican amendments to the Affordable Care Act.

This time around, the HELP Committee isn't going to have a meeting on the replacement. Committees in the Senate aren't going to have anything to do with this bill.

The substitute language that Speaker Ryan has filed likely won't even get a CBO analysis before it's jammed through the House tomorrow. Why is that? Because Republicans are so fearful that the American public will have the time to take a look at this and realize what it is. I don't often say that Bill Kristol is right, but he is right when he says this bill doesn't lower cost, improve insurance, increase liberty, or make health care better. So what's the point?

Here's three really simple ways to understand this bill, three simple ways. This bill is all about higher costs for consumers. It's all about less care for Americans all in order to finance tax cuts for the rich. There's the three prongs of Trumpcare: higher costs, less care, tax cuts for the rich.

You don't have to spend a lot of time deep inside this bill to figure out what it's all about. So costs go up, CBO says, 15% to 20% just in the first couple of years for a number of reasons. But primary amongst them is the fact that the help you're going to get to afford insurance dramatically decreases. For low-income Americans, you get $1200 less. If you're 60, you get really hosed. If you're 60, good luck affording insurance. Your subsidy goes down by $5800. And it gets even worse than that because this bill allows for the insurance companies to discriminate against older Americans by jacking up the ratios that you can charge older Americans versus younger Americans from 3-1 to 5-1. And so the average low-income 60'ish-year-old in this country, you'll be paying about $13,000 more out-of-pocket for health care. What problem does that solve?

Talking to people in Connecticut, I didn't hear a lot of my constituents who are in their 50's and 60's say listen, let me tell you the problem with the American health system. I'm paying way too little. I need to be paying - if i could be paying $13,000 more, that would scratch me where I itch, right? Nobody, nobody says that the problem with the health care system today is that costs are too low. No, it's the opposite.

Costs are too high, and yet the first prong of Trumpcare, higher costs. That's not me saying it. That's CBO saying it. Now, I'll give you the exception to this. Let's lay all of our cards out on the table. CBO does say if you are young, if you are healthy, and you are relatively affluent, you might get a lower rate. Be honest about that. So if you're young, if you're healthy, and you're affluent, you might get a lower rate. But that's a sliver of the population compared to all of the people who are going to be paying higher rates, especially older people and especially low-income people. Because the subsidies don't change if your income goes up. And because of the discrimination made legal in this bill, older people have to pay more.

So basically another way to think about this in terms of how costs are going up is the more you need health care, the less help you get. If you're low income and you're older, you get less help. If you're younger and higher income, comparatively, you get more help from this bill. Again, that's not attacking a problem that I hear about very often. People who need more help tend to - they need more help.

Here's your second chart. All of this is done in order to give a big tax cut. So here's the amount of tax cuts in this bill for people making $10,000. Here's the amount for people making $20,000 to $30,000. Here's the amount of the tax cut you get if you're $50,000 to $60,000. You sort of see a trend line here, right? It's about the same amount if you're making $10,000 up to about $200,000. The amount of tax cut you get from this bill in that range is zero.

But if you're making $200,000 or more, well, here's where the money is. Up to the point where people who are making the highest incomes in this country get over a million dollars in tax cuts. It repeals some tax provisions in the Affordable Care Act that were used to finance the subsidies, but all of those tax provisions affect the very top income level earners. So there's a tax cut in this bill, but it gives you zero if you make less than $200,000 a year. It gives you a lot if you're making more than $200,000 a year.

And here's your last chart. Less care. Here's what CBO says will happen if the Affordable Care Act remains. And this is a really important line to look at here because part of the narrative. Part of the explanation for this piece of legislation is that in Paul Ryan's words, "Obamacare is a death spiral." Donald trump says it's "collapsing." The Congressional Budget Office, which is run by a man who was handpicked by the Republican caucus in the House, the Congressional Budget Office says no, actually, it's not collapsing. It's not in a death spiral, that if you do nothing and allow the Affordable Care Act to remain, yeah, over ten years the number of people without insurance will go up by a little bit. It will go up to 28 million.

But the death spiral happens if you pass Trumpcare. There is a death spiral coming in the American health care system. There is a humanitarian catastrophe that's about to hit us, but it only happens if you choose to pass this piece of legislation that is pending before the House of Representatives today.

Now, I hear this legislation can't pass the United States Senate because my Republican colleagues understand this. So I'm not necessarily talking directly to my Republican colleagues here because I trust that they understand the collapse of the American health care system that occurs when, in a very short period of time, you create 24 million more uninsured people.

But remember, Donald Trump said during the campaign that no one was going to lose health care. Republicans in the House said that everyone who's on health care will get to keep it. CBO says that's not even close to true. Fourteen million lose care and eventually those that are uninsured go to 52 million.

Mr. President, you know this. My Republican colleagues know this. This 52 million, it's not that they're totally outside of the American health care system. If there's an emergency, they go to an emergency room and the emergency room covers their care. That's the most inhumane way to run a health care system, to wait till you're so sick, you're so ill, that your cancer has ravaged your body so badly that you have to show up to an emergency room. But they will get that care, often the most expensive care, and we will all pay for it.

Part of the reason that CBO says rates will go up is because this 52 million gets their care from emergency rooms. The emergency rooms in the hospitals pass that cost along to private insurers and everybody's premiums go up. Here's another way to kind of think of this. I know these numbers tend to get a little hard to digest, a little hard to understand as they get thrown around. Here's what 24 million people losing health care looks like. How many people is 24 million? Twenty-four million is the entire combined population of Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. This isn't - this isn't a minor shift in the number of people who won't have health care. This is a seismic change.

The entire population of 17 states lose health care over the course of ten years if this bill is passed. By the way, let's be honest about who these are. Yes, many of them will be people losing health care in the private marketplace. CBO says people who have private insurance will lose it because of this bill, either because their cost-sharing goes up and they can't afford it or because their employer might not offer it any longer, but a lot of this is in the Medicaid population. You know, you just got to make a decision. Medicaid population is by and large poor people, disabled people, elderly Americans, a lot of children, a lot of kids. Members are just going to have to make a decision whether your conscience will be okay - most are pretty sick and disabled and pretty young - if you're okay with that many people losing coverage.

So Paul Ryan is right, it's a three-pronged approach. The three prongs are higher costs, less care in order to finance tax cuts for the rich. It doesn't solve any problem that exists today in the health care system except for maybe as I mentioned that very narrow issue of young, healthy, affluent Americans. They will probably do a little bit better here. But everybody else does worse. And by the way, here's what CBO says is the reason why those young, affluent, healthy Americans do better.

Because you kick old people off of insurance. The only reason that premiums stabilize in years three and four and five, according to CBO, is because this bill jettisons millions of older, relatively sicker Americans off of health care. So as you just kick old people off health care, then it gets a little bit cheaper for the younger people who remain. So even the small percentage of Americans who, from a monetary standpoint do a little bit better under this bill, only do better because individuals who really needed care lose it under this approach.

This bill is moving really, really fast. It's moving really, really fast. And its impact is absolutely stunning. My hope is that it gets stuck somehow, that senators of goodwill recognize, as Bill Kristol did in his tweet, that this bill doesn't actually solve any problems. Maybe they recognize that it looks an awful lot like the Affordable Care Act.

For the speaker's reputation as being a big ideas guy, there's no new ideas in this legislation. It is essentially just the Affordable Care Act dialed down from ten to three-and-a-half, making health care unaffordable for everybody. The subsidies are still there. They're just much less. The individual mandate is still there. It just applies in a different, more cruel way. Instead of you paying a penalty when you lose coverage, you now pay a penalty when you lose coverage and try to sign up again. It's the same concept. It's just a penalty applied in a different place. And the insurance requirements are there. So this is no new ideas.

If you were ideologically opposed to the Affordable Care Act, there's no reason why this solves any of your problems. And from a practical consideration, it raises costs. It doesn't improve insurance and kicks a lot of people off health care.

My final thought is this. I know this issue of health care has become probably the most partisan in part because, yeah, there are some real important philosophical questions at the heart of this debate. I don't apologize for the fact that I do believe that health care should be looked at as a human right. I really think that in this country we give you access to education, we should give you access to health care as well. You're living in the most powerful and affluent country in the world. You probably shouldn't die because you're not rich enough to afford access to a doctor. It seems like something we should be able to do for you.

So there is some serious ideological differences because I know a lot of my Republican colleagues don't view it that way. They view health care as a commodity, much more so than I do. But we have shown the ability to work together on health care. And on some pretty controversial pieces of it.

At the end of 2016, just two months ago, we passed the 21st Century Cures Act. That wasn't easy. That was $6 billion of additional spending on medical research in this country. It included legislation that Senator Cassidy and I wrote, the Mental Health Reform Act, that you know, had some tough reforms on our insurance markets, requiring insurance companies to cover more mental illness. We had some tough issues. Senator Cornyn opposed our legislation, and then he became a supporter and champion of it. But we passed a big health care bill at the end of the 2016 with Republicans and Democrats supporting it. Frankly, in the end, some progressive Democrats voted against it and some conservative Republicans voted against it. So we've shown the ability to be able to work together. And so why don't we do the same thing here?

I submit to you that there are still big problems in the health care system. The Affordable Care Act didn't solve every problem that was out there. And even some parts of the Affordable Care Act have to be amended, have to be changed. But let's keep what's working in the Affordable Care Act and make improvements to the parts that aren't working as well. Let's move into territory that we haven't covered yet, like drug prices, and do something about that.

Donald trump gave a speech the other day - the President of the United States gave a speech earlier this week in which he told Americans that if you pass this legislation, drug prices would come "way, way, way down." That's his quote. Drug prices will come "way, way, way, way down." That's not in this bill. I mean, Trumpcare doesn't have anything that controls drug prices. Drug prices are not coming "way, way, way, way down." But we could work together to make sure that happens. We could have a tough conversation about what we're willing to pay when it comes to drugs, whether we are willing to let the rest of the world free ride on the United States' contribution to global research and development. That would be a really important discussion to have, and I bet you it wouldn't get all 100 of us, but it would allow for Republicans and Democrats to work together.

Instead of ramming this bill through this process, through the reconciliation process - which means you can do it with not a single Democrat supporting it - let's sit together and try to work out a bipartisan approach to improving our health care system. I know why Speaker Ryan is pushing this bill through so fast. He knows it doesn't solve any problems that exist in the American health care system. He knows that the only problem it solves is a political problem, a political problem created by the promise that Republicans and this president made to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

But since they are doing it so fast, so haphazardly, the replacement is going to result in disaster for Americans. That's not me saying that. That's the Congressional Budget Office. That's Bill Kirstol, that's Republicans and Democrats all across the country. Whatever happens tomorrow in the House of Representatives, the Senate will have a chance to be the adults in this conversation. Senate Republicans will have a chance to take a big step back and start over. And they can start over in a partisan way or they can start over by reaching out to democrats and saying, let's try to work this out together. And we may not get to that point where we have a bipartisan agreement, but, boy, it would be nice if my Senate republican colleagues would at least try, would at least try.

Because if they don't, well, then Paul Ryan is right: there will be three prongs to what will be called Trumpcare, if it isn't already - higher costs for consumers, less care for Americans, all in order to finance a giant tax cut for the rich. This isn't what the American people thought they were getting. And we have a chance in the Senate to do so much better.

I yield the floor. And I would note the absence of a quorum.

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