Sen. Lankford Delivers Floor Speech on Obamacare Repeal and Replacement Process

WASHINGTON, July 27 -- The office of Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., issued the following news release:

Senator James Lankford (R-OK) tonight delivered a floor speech on the Senate process to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. On Tuesday, the Senate voted for a 'motion to proceed' to begin an open debate and amendment process to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The Senate will conclude debate and consideration of amendments late tonight.

Excerpts:

Now, I've heard a lot of folks talk about [Congressional Budget Office] scores. I would tell you, I'm in the middle of a group that's very frustrated with CBO right now. Every policy we want to float, to say this is something we think will be very effective, to be able to help people in the safety net or to be able to help people purchase insurance, CBO responds back to us, 'that sounds like an interesting idea, it will take us about four weeks to study it.' When we're in a legislative process, when we're doing legislative amendments, we can't wait four weeks between each amendment. We have to be able to get answers from them. So we're stuck in this spot.

So, our resolution is... we have a House version that has been scored. We have a Senate version. We have a lot of changes that we want to make, even to our latest version. The best answer we have while we wait on CBO scoring - another month to be able to get us an answer back - is to be able to get an interim bill, get into a conference between the House and the Senate, allow CBO the month that they need to be able to score this and then for us to be able to pass a better bill in September. So that's where we're stuck right now. So this is not a final bill that's coming out. This is still an interim process that's moving. But we need to be able to keep this process moving. Because there are people at home that are counting on this actually getting better for them in the future.

Because their words to me are: this cannot get worse. Because I can't afford what we currently have and I can't afford that "access" that I've been given to healthcare. Now, in the middle of this debate that a lot of people on the outside look at it and say how come the Senate can't move faster. And I respond back to them, we can't get a score from the CBO. We can't move any faster. We're stuck waiting on them. They typically will call me and say 'just run over them.' Well, we're not going to ignore the law and we're not going to ignore the rules of the Senate. We are going to work to get this right.

In the meantime, I've heard an awful lot of scare tactics coming out. It usually circles around 'there will be 22 million people that will suddenly not have health insurance.' Which is a fascinating number to me since only nine million people have Obamacare right now. Nine million are actually on the exchanges. So, it seems difficult for me for 22 million people to lose what only 9 million people have. But if you're an economist, they look at on the horizon people that may one day join in at some point and then those people that may have joined in then might have lost their insurance. It makes total sense to an economist. But to all of us that just look at math, it becomes very difficult. CBO also believes that without a federal mandate and tax penalty on individuals, they will not buy this insurance product. People do not want to buy it and will not buy it unless they're made to buy it. The problem is there are 6.5 million people in the country that are also required to buy it, that they're just paying the tax [penalty] rather than buying the insurance. We need to allow people to make decisions on their own life. But we need to also make sure there's actually an insurance product they can afford.