Mr. Chairman:
My Republican colleagues have called us here this morning to once again tear down the Affordable Care Act. They’ve staged this political event to blow another implementation issue out of proportion.
What’s more, they’ve decided that one subcommittee is not enough; they need to bring together two subcommittees to prove a purely partisan, political point.
It’s a disappointing choice on my Republican colleagues’ part, because by now they should accept that the ACA is working. Access to quality health coverage has expanded dramatically since we enacted the law.
8 million people have bought insurance through the Exchanges. Over 6 million middle class Americans have saved money through tax credits. Another 6 million have enrolled in Medicaid. That’s success by any measure.
Access isn’t everything, though, and we still have work to do to make the ACA even better. In particular, we must control the cost of health care. I am hand-in-hand with the Chairman on this issue.
That’s why I’ve been working to combat fraud, waste and abuse in the system and to promote shared savings programs that save providers, taxpayers, and patients money.
Reforms such as these will bolster the ACA and provide greater health security to American families.
But instead of discussing controlling cost and building on the success of the ACA, we’ve been called here today to talk about my Republican colleagues’ distorted view of the premium tax credit verification system.
Virtually none of their criticisms are sincere, and there are little to no facts to support their claims.
When my Republican colleagues talk about inconsistencies in the verification process, please understand that they’re not telling us the full story.
Although there have been inconsistencies, only a fraction actually impact anyone’s tax credits. In fact, many inconsistencies relate to applications that were never even completed.
Just think about what their solution to the issue is-a letter was written to Secretary Lew demanding an immediate freeze on tax credits.
If my colleagues on the other side had their way, no middle class families - even those without inconsistencies - would benefit from these tax credits for the foreseeable future. And when we hear the other side pretend that these inconsistencies are unprecedented, let’s look at the facts.
Medicaid, CHIP, and other highly successful programs have handled similar data inconsistencies before.
We saw this coming when we wrote the ACA, which is why we included provisions to correct inaccuracies. It’s important to get this right, and we designed the system to make sure that we do.
The more data that comes out, the more stories we hear of people getting coverage, the more we can be sure that the ACA is working.
Just this past Thursday, a new Gallup survey showed that the uninsured rate in America is at the lowest point since Gallup began collecting such data. It’s not political spin or fuzzy math to say that the ACA has been a success. Republicans should join Democrats in discussing how to make it even better.
