Tens of millions of Americans are modern-day slaves - unable to retire early, or working in jobs they don't really want, just for the health insurance they need to take care of themselves, a spouse, or a child with a 'preexisting condition.'
I am here for my mother and all the Americans who are forced to spend time arguing with health insurance companies instead of focusing on getting well. I am here for the millions of lives that will be touched and in some cases, saved, by health insurance reform. I am here for the small businesses who are forced to choose between health care and hiring. I am here for the seniors who are unable to afford the prescriptions they need.
High-quality health care is not available to millions of Americans who don't have health insurance, or whose substandard plans provide minimum coverage. That's why the Affordable Care Act is so important. It provides quality health insurance to both the uninsured and underinsured.
Economically, we are gain weaker. Millions of Americans have no health insurance - including many poor children. if they do not get the care they need, they may become scarred for life; but the President George W. Bush vetoed the children's health insurance bill - evidently we couldn't afford it. But we were talking about just a few days fighting in Iraq.
Now, why would my supporters be supporting somebody who doesn't want to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a starvation wage, doesn't want to do that. Why would anybody that supports me support a candidate like Trump who wants to throw millions and millions of people off of health insurance? We need to guarantee health care to all people as a right, not throw millions of people off health insurance as Trump wants to do.
The Trump administration, to its credit, has initiatives on housing. It has initiatives on child care. It does not have true initiatives in terms of making health care more affordable and covering the remaining millions of Americans who do not have insurance coverage.
Until you've looked a parent in the eye and told them their perfect child has a preexisting condition no insurance company will cover, you can't tell me the Affordable Care Act isn't worth fighting for.
Bring market forces to bear on health care insurers. Creating a health care 'exchange,' one of the better ideas included in House Bill 3200, creates affordable, accessible and portable insurance for millions of Americans.
I worked with President Obama on the Affordable Care Act and getting health coverage to all Americans. It was my legislation that said insurance companies can no longer deny coverage for kids with preexisting conditions.
The result was, of course, that today, tragically, more than 40 million Americans don't have health insurance, and for many, not having health insurance means they don't have access to good health care.
Americans need access to affordable, reliable health insurance. They want President Trump to take responsibility and work to ensure their continued access to their insurance - creating certainty and affordability, not confusion and chaos.
Under the Healthy Americans Act, you're in charge of your health care - not your employer. If you lose your job, change jobs or just can't find a job, your health insurance is guaranteed to stick with you.
One of the consequences of if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, is that all of us now are at risk of being a preexisting - of having a preexisting condition waiting to happen. Life, increasingly, is a preexisting condition waiting to happen, now that we have more and more of this data available.
What is problematic about Obamacare is that it is killing millions of jobs in this country and has killed millions of jobs. It has forced millions of people into part time work. It has caused millions of people to lose their insurance, to lose their doctors, and to face skyrocketing insurance premiums. That is unacceptable.
In a zero corporate tax rate environment, if the private sector doesn't create tens of millions of jobs, then I don't know what it takes to create tens of millions of jobs.
We have health insurance companies playing a major role in the provision of healthcare, both to the employed whose employers provide health insurance, and to those who are working but on their own are not able to afford it and their employers either don't provide it, or don't provide it at an affordable price. We are still struggling. We've made a lot of progress. Ten million Americans now have insurance who didn't have it before the Affordable Care Act, and that is a great step forward.
The Affordable Care Act is a huge problem. [Repealing the ACA is] going to have huge implications. We have millennials that live in Boston that are on their parents' health insurance. The businesses have hired them and have been able to hire more people because they have been able to be on their own health insurance. We have seniors in our city who have preexisting conditions, or something called a "donut hole," which is a prescription drug [gap] in Medicare. Whatever changes they make could have detrimental effects on people's health care, but also on the economy.