"Mr. President I rise to speak on the business before the Senate today: and that is the question of whether or not to proceed to debate on the Patient Protection and Affordability Act- a bill that is the best work of the Senate to date on a subject of significant importance to the people of my state and the country. My vote to move forward on this important debate should in no way be construed by supporters of this current framework as support of this particular bill. After a thorough review of the bill over the last two and a half days, which included lengthy discussions with a variety of health care experts, and after reviewing the cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, I have decided that there are enough significant reforms and safeguards in this bill to move forward with the debate, but much more work needs to be done.
Over the past many years, and in particular in the last six months, I have heard from people all across Louisiana that their premium costs continue to rise without warning, threatening the financial stability of their families and their businesses. I have also heard the pleas and cries of many people who need coverage and can not find it anywhere. Through months of public meetings in VFW halls, school gyms and in hospitals and health clinics- from New Orleans to Lafayette and smaller communities throughout the state- it is clear that doing nothing is not an option, nor is waiting any longer to address this issue.
Spirited debate and good faith negotiations in the Senate have produced a bill that contains some cutting edge reforms that will, I am convinced, reduce costs for families and small businesses, while reducing the debt burden of the Federal Government, but it must be implemented properly, and these reforms must be put in place in a timely fashion.
Small business owners across the country have told me the same thing: in order to remain viable and create the jobs they want to, they need affordable health insurance and they need stable and predictable costs. Under the current system as we all now know, small business owners are frequently confronted with an impossible choice when an employee or an employee's family member gets seriously ill: they can expect exorbitant cost increases or they can remove that employee and their family members from their health plan. I so appreciate the hard work of so many different small businesses organizations that helped craft the framework that can begin to address these difficult, even unacceptable, situations.
Before I discuss the work that needs to be done to improve this bill, I would like to discuss some of the points in this bill that encourage me to move forward in this debate.
Small business owners would no longer be confronted with the kinds of volatile cost increases that result from an illness among their employees. This bill prevents insurance companies from escalating their rates or dropping their coverage after you get sick. That important change goes a long way toward stabilizing the amount that small businesses have to pay for their health plans - and it allows business owners to do what they do best: plan smart investments that grow their businesses and the economy.
In addition, it contains a provision that will stop the increase in health care costs, and start an increase in real take-home wages for millions of American workers. In recent years, economists have found that workers' wages have remained largely stagnant. Why? Because employers are paying more for health care and other benefits, leaving less money for pay increases.
It would encourage employers to move away from high-cost benefit plans, and increase the amount that working families can take home in wages. In fact, MIT economist Jon Gruber predicts that this provision could result in an additional $234 billion in wages for working men and women in America over the next two decades.
Under the current system, families are forced to make the excruciating choice between getting the medical care they need and paying their monthly bills. In Louisiana my constituents pay an average of 30% of their incomes on health care premiums - nearly 1/3rd of all the money they make.
It would ensure that the majority of Louisiana families would pay no more than 10 percent of their income for healthcare. That's real progress.
These reforms that I have just mentioned are necessary now and are too important a goal for the Senate to abandon its work on them now. But as I have said, there is still a great deal of work that needs to be done.
Number one, in order to increase choices for small businesses, we must enhance and expand tax credits that are in this bill for small businesses. We must provide more choice in the private marker, by strengthening the changes that we are attempting to establish. I will also fight for more tax equity for the 27 million Americans who are currently self-employed.
Number two, in order to really deliver on our promise to hold down costs for families we should focus on ways to prevent premiums from being excessively raised between the bill's enactment and the date the exchanges open. And, we should continue to remove outdated loopholes in existing law to ensure that all health insurance companies will compete honestly in the market.
Finally, I remain concerned that the version of the public option included in this bill could pose significant risk to the taxpayer and I will continue to work with my colleagues to find a better and bipartisan solution for this issue.
I have suggested that a free-standing premium supported 'competitive community option' which would trigger on a date certain if our private market reforms fail to work might be a possible compromise. Because I am hopeful that we can make progress on each of these concerns and others as well I believe in open and transparent debate on the Senate floor is in order.
I stand ready to work together with my colleagues to fashion a principled, and hopefully, bipartisan compromise in the end to achieve what many Americans are hoping for."
