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Ben Voelkel [email protected]
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) spoke on the Senate floor Monday about the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson health care bill, legislation he cosponsored to remove decision-making power from Washington, D.C., and allow state governments to develop innovative solutions to serve the health care needs of their citizens.
Excerpts from Sen. Johnson’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.
“I rise today to talk about the disaster that is Obamacare and a possible solution. A powerful first step. Not perfect, but a step that would take us off the path toward a single payer system and put us on a path toward federalism, greater state control, but in many respects, greater freedom for the American public.”
“We’ve heard an awful lot of false charges. I would like to refute a couple of those. One of the claims of Obamacare is that it guaranteed if you had a pre-existing condition, you were free from worry, you’d be covered.”
“I believe governors, state legislators, people in the state of Wisconsin are going to be far more concerned about Shari and Verne Colby, will have innovative solutions like Wisconsin’s high-risk pool or Maine’s invisible high-risk pool to actually bring down premiums so the Colbys can actually afford insurance without having to quit their jobs.”
“Let’s talk about cuts. What would a cut really look like? Well, this is the truth in terms of what we are projected to spend on Medicaid and Obamacare, and what we would spend under Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson.”
“Spending never declines year over year, not once. It continues to grow year after year, not that far from the projection.”
“We haven’t been honest with ourselves in this body… we haven’t come to grips with why have premiums doubled and in many cases tripled. It’s because of the faulty design of Obamacare, the fact that we’re asking five percent to six percent of the American population to shoulder the full burden of covering people with pre-existing high-cost conditions.”
“We have to take the first step of loosening the ties of this one size fits all model here in Washington, D.C., and letting states innovate like Wisconsin and Maine’s invisible high risk pool.”
Take a look at the graphs that were used during his explanation here.
