Pelosi Remarks at Press Conference on Impact of GOP Health Care Repeal on Children

Contact: Drew Hammill/Caroline Behringer, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi joined Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member Bobby Scott, Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr., Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Richard Neal, Budget Committee Ranking Member John Yarmuth, Children's Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman, school nurses, advocates, parents and children to highlight how Republican plans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act will harm children. Below are the Leader's opening remarks followed by the question and answer session.

Leader Pelosi's Opening Remarks:

"Thank you very much, Ranking Member Scott for your leadership. You have gathered us here – you, the Ranking Members of the committees of jurisdiction, your committee, Education and Workforce, Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce. And we'll be hearing from them.

"We have some very special guests here today, so I'm going to be very brief in my remarks by saying: I associate myself with the remarks of Ranking Member Scott. He covered the territory very, very well.

"But I do want to tell: I think nothing speaks more eloquently to the need to save the Affordable Care Act than stories. The fight for the Affordable Care Act is the fight for children like Zoe Madison Lihn – born with a severe congenital heart defect in May of 2010. She faced her first of three open heart surgeries when she was 15 hours old. And by six months old, she was halfway through her lifetime limit her insurer placed on her care. Without the ACA, Zoe and her family faced a harrowing future; not only using up all of her lifetime coverage before preschool, but carrying the burden of a pre-existing condition for the rest of her life.

"With the Affordable Care Act, Zoe is protected. The Republicans are throwing all that in doubt.

"And as our Ranking Member said: millions of children would be without coverage, more than doubling the number of uninsured by 2019. We stand strong to protect the Affordable Care Act. We want to keep America healthy.

"Republicans say they want to make America great again – they want to Make America Sick Again. We will not stand for that. We will fight this fight. And one of the reasons we will fight this fight is the story of Daisy Brown, who will tell us her story – her moving story about her son and her family. Daisy, thank you for being with us today."

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Q: Are Democrats going to work with Republicans on [inaudible]…

Ranking Member Pallone. Well look, we will work with the Republicans, but the bottom line is they can't be repealing the Affordable Care Act. And I've said this over and over again with them, we want to build on the Affordable Care Act we do not want it repealed. And we don't believe they have any replacement on him, we certainly haven't seen anything in the hearings in the Energy and Commerce Committee so, we'll work with them on anything but the bottom line is: no ACA repeal.

Leader Pelosi. Well if I may answer that, the goals of the Affordable Care Act were three-fold: one was to expand coverage to many more people, to improve benefit packages for everyone, not just the 20 million as Steny mentioned but the 155 million people who get their insurance through the workplace, no pre-existing conditions as a discrimination against them, no lifetime limits until when your child is 26, he or she can stay on your policy, being a woman is no longer a preexisting condition and insurance companies must spend 80% of the money they take in on your health care, not on advertising or CEO pay and the rest of that. So if they want to improve on that, then we have something to talk about but, as Marian Wright Edelman said: we're not going back.

So I think there's never been a bill that's passed congress that we couldn't say maybe we can change it a little bit when we see the implementation. Have you ever heard of a bill, whether it was Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, it's always been about improvement waiting in the wings. So if they want to expand the coverage more, lower the costs more, or improve the benefits package while at the same time holding insurance companies to the 80 percent, we're happy to talk to them about that.

Q: If the ACA is repealed, it would think that would affect sports. As far as concussions go there might be a stall on that. Are you worried at all that this will affect the health care of kids playing high impact sports?

Ranking Member Pallone. Well I'm just concerned because, frankly, I don't see any effort to replace the ACA with anything, at all. In other words, my fear is they are going to repeal it, and there won't ever be a replacement because the right wing, the Freedom Caucus is not interested in a replacement.

So yes, we have to be concerned about everything, because as you say, you know, it's not only a question of coverage, but it's a question of guaranteed benefits package that's very generous at this point, and if you start talking about, you know, replacements that eliminate a lot of these benefits and have skeletal plans, which is what I'm afraid of. Then a lot of things aren't going to be covered, which is why I say: no repeal.

Leader Pelosi. I think it's important to note that this goes beyond health care. When we set forth to do this, if everyone in the country had decided that he or she loved her coverage and loved her insurance company, which as you know was not the case, some of the witnesses here were telling us about how it was, where's our mom? How it was when you had a pre-existing condition and the rest.

But if there were no other reason to do it except cost, the cost to individuals, to families, to small business, to corporate America, to the federal, state, and local government: what the costs were, unsustainable. And they were ever-increasing. Especially if you had a pre-existing condition or something like that. So we had to do it to lower costs, and we did. And the rate of growth of the cost of medical care in our country is, and insurance, is at the slowest rate of increase it had been in the 50 years they've been measuring that.

But the other point of that is, this is something that has created four million jobs, which will go away. It will, again, raise costs, lose jobs, hurt communities by having hospitals, which are major employers and health providers and that, so it has an economic piece to it too. And by the way, it is tied directly – as Members have said – to Medicare and Medicaid. So when you're talking about young people and challenges that they have, the Medicaid piece is very, very important.

And I might just add one piece that applies not just to young people, but older people. The opioid epidemic is a major one in our country, and the Governor of Ohio, a Republican Governor, John Kasich, has said, ‘Thank God for Medicaid, because it's going to help us address the opioid epidemic.' So this thing is very far reaching as Frank Pallone said, it's an ideological point that they have: they don't believe in a government thing. They think that Medicare should wither on the vine. That Medicaid is block grant, and capped. So this is a fight that we have, for the good health of America, and Steny said in his remarks, it's about so much more.

But what could be more important than the health of our children? Not only is it the good health, the economic security of their families, safe environment in which they can thrive, a world at peace in which they can succeed, and pension – Medicare for their grandparents. So that their families can focus on them, rather than on their grandparents. It has so many reasons why we should do this. And that's why I thank Bobby and Ranking Members Neal and Pallone for calling our attention to what this means to children. Thank you Bobby, thank you Frank, thank you Richie for what you are doing.

[Applause]

Ranking Member Scott. And the problem with ‘repeal' is you can point out a lot of people that will be disadvantaged. 30 million people will lose their insurance, but also, you can mess up insurance so that nobody will be able to buy insurance. That's why you can't tolerate a ‘repeal' without a replacement that is better. And I think that's why a lot of them are noticing that if they were to try to repeal with no replacement, they would destroy, mess up the insurance market so badly that they wouldn't want to have anything to do with it. That's why they're slowing up. And I think until they can come up with a replacement, which at this point looks unlikely – if they had a replacement, you would've seen it in the last six years, where it's unlikely that they'll be able to do anything.

Leader Pelosi. Once again, let's thank Marian Wright Edelman. Thank you.

Ranking Member Scott. Thank you.

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