Schumer Floor Remarks on the Republican Healthcare Bill and Net Neutrality
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor regarding the Senate GOP version of Trumpcare as well as the need for an open and free Internet. Below are his remarks:
Yesterday, my friend the Majority Leader announced that he would be extending this work period by two weeks so the Republicans have more time to finish their healthcare bill.
With all due respect, time is not the issue. Two more weeks won’t help Republicans fix this bill. Remember, the Republican leadership told everyone they’d vote on the bill before July 4th. Two weeks have gone by and they don’t seem any closer to having a bill that will actually improve healthcare in America.
They seem even further away. When you have a rotten product, time is not on your side. The longer you wait, the more people know about it, fewer people like it, the less popular it is, and the harder it is to pass it. And I don't even have to tell my good friend, the Leader, that. He knows it. I know why our colleagues are not so unhappy about what the Leader said.
We know why they don’t want to go home – they don’t want to face the wrath of their constituents. If I were a Republican, I wouldn’t want to go home either; I wouldn’t want to face my constituents and try to defend this deeply unpopular and damaging bill.
Now, the most significant change proposed to their legislation over the course of two weeks is an amendment by the Junior Senator of Texas that would actually make the bill worse. By allowing insurers to sell cut-rate plans that cover very few services, the Cruz amendment creates a dangerous bait-and-switch.
The bait is that premiums would come down a bit for some because insurance won’t have to cover as much, and the switch is that the deductibles and copays would go way up to make up the difference. Under the Cruz amendment, you could be paying a monthly premium for health insurance so threadbare, with a deductible so high, that you wouldn’t get any benefit. For many, a Cruz policy could be worse than none at all.
A Cruz policy leads to junk insurance, something nobody really wants. Maybe a few insurance companies.
Ironically, the Cruz amendment would cause exactly the kind of death spiral my Republican friends keep talking about.
A group of patient advocates including the AARP, the Cancer Action Network and American Heart Association – not political groups, these are patient advocates -- said that if the Cruz amendment passed, “Younger and healthier individuals would be allowed to purchase non-ACA compliant plans that have lower premiums but fewer benefits. Without the younger, healthier people in the risk pool, the premiums for ACA-compliant plans would rise quickly and significantly. This same kind of risk pool segmentation occurred prior to enactment of the ACA when 35 states operated high risk pools…In that experience, most of those states…were forced to limit enrollment, reduce benefits, create waiting lists, and raise premiums and out-of-pocket costs to the point of unaffordability. Millions of patients lacked access to care and treatment.”
That's not Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader, talking. That is the AARP, Cancer Action Network and the American Heart Association. Again, what those groups said about the Cruz plan, that it would “limit enrollment, reduce benefits, create waiting lists, raise premiums and out-of-pocket costs to the point of unaffordability” because the Cruz plan is very similar to what we had before ACA.
Even the conservative American Action Forum said the Cruz Amendment is “the definition of a death spiral.”
Higher costs, less care, waiting lists and death spirals – the Cruz Amendment in a nutshell. How many are going to vote for that?
And that’s the most significant change that Republicans came up with after an extra two weeks spent on the bill. Imagine if they have another two weeks what they'll come up with.
My friends on the other side should have no illusions: They can’t distract our attention from this bill with phony complaints over nominations or any other issue. More time is not going to solve their problem on healthcare. It’s much deeper than that. The problem is the substance of the bill, which so cruelly exchanges healthcare for working Americans for a massive tax break for the very wealthy.
The idea is so backwards that the American people have revolted against this legislation. Even in the deeply conservative parts of my state, where I’ve met with my constituents, there is a revulsion to this bill. I’m not surprised that some polls say that only 12% of Americans support it.
There is no “fixing” a bill as broken as this one. There is no tweaking a bill as fundamentally flawed as this one.
An amended bill that only kicks 15 or 17 or 20 million Americans off their insurance, though less than the last CBO estimate, would still be a moral travesty.
An amended bill that gives a slightly smaller tax break to the wealthy while still cutting Medicaid to the bone would still be gravely worse than the status quo.
The only answer for my Republican friends is simple: start over. Abandon cuts to Medicaid and abandon tax breaks for the very wealthy and abandon this one-party approach.
Democrats want to work with our Republican colleagues to actually improve our healthcare system, and it turns out, that’s what the American people want as well.
The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 71 percent of Americans favor a bipartisan effort to improve our healthcare system, as opposed to the Republican’s partisan effort.
That is, again, 71 percent of Americans favor a bipartisan effort to improve our healthcare. 72 percent of independents and even 46 percent of Trump supporters.
When will my Republican colleagues start listening to the American people? Start over, drop this partisan process and this devastating bill, and work with us. We’re willing to stay two weeks, two months, two years to get a good healthcare bill for the American people, but we should be included in the process.
Finally, Madam President, today is the “net neutrality” day of action, so I wanted to add a few words on the issue.
We depend on a free and open internet to spur innovation and job creation. And our economy works best when innovators, entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes compete on a level playing field. Net Neutrality, very simply, says that everyone – consumers, small businesses, startups – deserve the same access to and quality of internet as big corporations.
When I was growing up in Brooklyn, my father owned a small exterminating business. If his competitor down the street had received preferred electricity service, he would have been rightly outraged—and the law would have protected him from that unfair treatment. We don’t reserve certain highways for a single trucking company, and we don’t limit phone service to hand-picked stores. We shouldn’t reserve high-speed internet for a favored few corporations either.
That was the basis for the FCC’s decision to preserve net neutrality in 2015.
Now, of course, the conservatives and industry interests see an opportunity to roll back these protections and that access to a free and open Internet in order to favor powerful corporate interests.
President Trump’s appointee to lead the FCC, Chairman Ajit Pai, has already taken several actions to undercut fair Internet access. In his first two weeks on the job, Chairman Pai stopped nine companies from providing discounted high-speed Internet to low-income individuals, and he jammed through nearly a dozen industry-backed actions, including some to begin curtailing net neutrality. And now, he has formally opened proceedings to end the Open Internet as we know it.
Once again, this Administration favors the big, wealthy, special corporate interests over the average American. The American people should realize that is what the Trump Administration is doing time and time again. They talk like they are for working people, but when it comes to actions like this one on net neutrality, they favor the big special interests. That, Mr. And Mrs. American consumer, is going to make sure that in many instances, you pay more.
It’s another example of the Trump Administration sticking up for big corporations and special interests to the detriment of the people and small businesses – exactly the opposite of what President Trump promised in his campaign.
The Open Internet order is working well and it should remain undisturbed.
If President Trump and Chairman Pai proceed down the path of dismantling net neutrality, they can expect a wall of resistance from Senate Democrats. We will fight tooth and nail to protect fair and equal Internet access for all Americans.
And President Trump, Senate Republicans and Chairman Pai can expect a wall of resistance from the American people, who are already making their voices known in record numbers. So far, over 6 million Americans have sent comments to the FCC on the issue. The fight has just begun, and we will not let up until the FCC abandons its wrongheaded plans.
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