Sen. Cantwell on Senate Floor: Republicans Must Come to Table on Health Care, Not Throw ‘Another Hail Mary Pass’
Today,
To date, no hearings have been held on Trumpcare. None are planned.
A transcript of the Senator's floor remarks is below.
So there is a little bit of irony that we're the ones out here today still talking about this health care bill. I think because we know what the challenges were and we tried to address them, and we're not afraid to keep addressing them. We're not afraid to be out here today talking about solutions that we want to see as well. So I thank my colleague from
But the thing to do now is not try to just break up some votes in the next few days and then come back in July. The thing is to sit down and have a serious discussion. I notice that a couple of my colleagues are down at the
So I don't know if people are ready to focus on this the way we focused on it, you know, in that time period for more than a year. More than a year, day after day after day, in meetings and hearings. But I would hope what they would do is stop this proposal and sit down and have an open process and have a discussion on these policies because they're so important. Now, we've been having all this discussion and a lot of frustration that people have talked about is the 7% individual market. And there are ways to fix and improve the individual market.
I feel like I was fortunate enough to put forward one of the better ideas that has worked successfully, at least its working successfully in the state of
What's so great about this in helping to address the individual market is because where we are on this side, we are willing to allow individuals that don't work for a large company to get the same clout as if they worked for a large company. Because when you buy in bulk, you get a discount. Americans know that. That's why they shop at
So longer periods of time to get access to health care, more complicated health care costs, rising premiums. When we've gone around our state, we've heard loud and clear from the provider community and the hospitals, that they saw downward pressure on price of private insurance because we expanded Medicaid.
And the economic numbers are out there now to show the same thing. So cutting people off of Medicaid is not the solution to the individual market. I hope somebody down there at the
In 2020 when Medicaid cap, if it did go into effect, the analysis is that it would cost-shift
And by 2028, we would be cost-shifting
So literally faster turnaround time on lab reports, better expedience of nursing care. I think it was something like a 72% reduction in insurance liability. I mean, huge successes by changing and improving the delivery system that helps put pressure down on price.
This is what we need to be talking about. And there is much innovation that was in the Affordable Care Act, and we need to now ask the question, what further things do we need to do to make sure that that kind of driving down cost is there in the individual market as well?
But you are not going to drive down price. There are reports now out by the Center on Budget Priorities that shows that the price will actually go up in the individual market if you cut people off of Medicaid. Basically, it will just increase by several thousand dollars the actual amount of money that the individual market will have to pay in insurance.
So that clearly is not the solution. I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle -- I hope they come back and say, it's time to work in a discussion about these ideas, in a broad way, not just another Hail Mary pass, just get rid of this notion that cutting poor people off of Medicaid is somehow going to magically fix the individual market. It's not.
And so I just thank my colleagues from the finance committee who went through all of that. And believe me, I'm telling you, these discussions went on for weeks and weeks and weeks. Some people here are trying to come up with a score and get an answer, you know, in a week on this entire package. I think we probably debated probably for, I would say probably two or three weeks just on the motion of reforming the getting off of fee-for-service a value index and getting the priorities of the delivery system focused on better outcomes at lower costs.
This is something that really should be a big priority in health care. And I remember we had private meetings, we had the head of CBO come down and talk to us. We had hearings. We probably spent three weeks just on one concept of how effective that would be in the health care delivery system. So I just -- I see we're still here. We're still talking. We're still willing to improve this delivery system and make sure people have better access to care. And I thank my colleagues for including me in this discussion today.
And I see my -- I just want to again thank my colleague from
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