Sen. Cantwell Takes Senate Floor to Defend Vulnerable Americans From Trumpcare Bill
A transcript of the Senator's floor remarks is below.
We've all been home for the weekends talking to our constituents. We've all been back here now with the CBO news. And we're here because we are very concerned about the next steps the
I talked to an official where they literally cut in half the uninsured in a community and they are delivering great adult dental access to a population of 46,000 people in that county that don't have access to dental care. So they're making great progress.
I talked to a veteran who had served our country, who literally got out and is now going to school, but without the help of Medicaid will not be able to cover her health care expenses. I met a woman just on the street and told me her husband had lost his job. She never thought they would be on Medicaid. But when he lost his job, they were on Medicaid, and they depended on that to provide health care for them and their children. And I met a gentleman who also said he too lost his job, and then after that came down with a serious life-threatening illness. And it was only Medicaid that saved him.
So what do we know today that's different than last Friday? Now we have some CBO numbers. We know the numbers -- we know the numbers that 22 million Americans - after the result of this if it was passed - would be uninsured. Fifteen million on Medicaid would lose insurance.
And it leaves us to ask about not just the impact of this on individuals, as I just mentioned, because I believe there's a much better way to go with innovation. But what it also does for the individual market, a lot of this debate started because people thought the individual market hadn't seen some of the benefits. Why not talk about the individual market? Why if 7% of health care delivery, the individual market was having a problem, why not talk about ideas to improve the individual market? Instead we have a bill from the
If you want to improve Medicaid and delivery services and help decrease costs, let's do that. There are so many innovative ideas. But just cutting people off of Medicaid to solve the individual market problem just doesn't even make sense to me. We now have, after last Friday too, the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, an assessment talking about how this would raise annual premiums in the individual market. And they gave some various examples. For example, in
We've heard from Republican governors and Democratic governors together talking about this. They sent us a letter saying the first thing we should do is focus on improving our nation's private health insurance system. Where did the governors ask that you come and beat up on Medicaid? They didn't say that. They didn't say please beat up on Medicaid. Have a big party in covering people on Medicaid as a partner for us for 65 years and then leave us stuck with half the bill. They didn't say that. They basically say quote, 'Medicaid provisions included in this bill are problematic. Instead we recommend
Also last week, a nonpartisan study by the
That report also talks about job loss throughout the country, saying that we could lose more than
Everybody knows -- everybody knows America is living longer and as they age, need more health care. And to our colleagues who want to reduce those costs, we're ready. We're ready to call them and talk about how we reduce those costs. I have talked about how I've authored community-based health care that has helped our state save
Taking this out on the poor people of America who need Medicaid will make it worse for us as well. It will raise our rates, return the costs to where they are, and not help us solve this problem for the future. So I hope our colleagues will understand that so many people raising so many concerns about this, yes, they're about economics. But they are also about personal stories of people, just like our colleague from
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