Senate Floor

A group of Democratic senators took to the Senate floor this evening to offer a series of bills aimed at fixing our nation’s health care system and to urge their Republican colleagues to work with them on a bipartisan approach to health care.
“Why can’t we work together?” U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) asked his colleagues. “We do in our committees … Why can’t we do it with health care?”
Nelson introduced legislation earlier this month that would lower health insurance premiums for some Floridians by as much as 13 percent. That bill would create a permanent reinsurance fund to cover larger-than-expected insurance claims and help stabilize the market. The additional stability created by the bill would, according to one Florida insurer, lower premiums in Florida by up to 13 percent.
“Every one of us has a suggestion out here,” Nelson said. “You put all of these suggestions together and you’re talking about really fixing the current law.”
Following is a rush transcript and here’s a link to video of Nelson’s remarks:

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson
Remarks on the Senate Floor
June 28, 2017
Sen. Nelson: Mr. President, all over Florida people walk up to me and say, “Bill, what’s going on? Why can’t congress get together? Why can’t we work together?” We do in our committees. We usually work together. We certainly do with Senator Thune who is the chairman of the Finance — of the Commerce Committee. This senator is the ranking member. We get a lot of things out. We’re going to mark up the FAA bill tomorrow. There are a lot of controversial issues. We’re going to get that out. Why can’t we do it with health care?
So last night I had a telephone town hall meeting in my state of Florida, 6,000 people joined. And they asked questions for an hour. And often they would get through asking their question, and they’d say, “I wish you guys could work together.” So that’s what you’ve been hearing in all of these speeches. Well, let me give you one suggestion that would lower premiums on the existing bill of the — not the existing bill, the existing law, the Affordable Care Act, 13%. I had it costed out in Florida.
Okay. You know, every now and then you’re going to have a catastrophic loss. It’s kind of like when I was the elected insurance commissioner of Florida and I inherited the mess after the monster hurricane. It was — Hurricane Andrew was such a monster hurricane that it took down a number of insurance companies because the losses were so big. So we had to try to get insurance companies to come back into Florida. We created a reinsurance fund. We called it the Florida Hurricane Catastrophic Fund that would reinsure or insure the insurance companies against catastrophic loss.
That’s what you can do right here. You could be like my poor constituent Megan who fought cancer for two years with two transplants and ultimately lost the battle, but the bill was $8 million. That’s hard for any insurance company to swallow, but those are going to be limited, isolated cases. So why don’t we create a reinsurance fund for the marketplace in the Affordable Care Act to help the insurance companies in catastrophic loss? I ask them, if we did that in Florida, with the Florida marketplace, what would it mean? It would reduce the insurance premiums under the marketplace Florida 13%.
Now, that’s just one suggestion. Every one of us has a suggestion out here. You put all of these suggestions together and you’re talking about really fixing the current law, instead of this roadway that we see our friends on the other side of the aisle going down, a solution that’s going to take coverage away from 22 million people, and it’s going to cut $800 billion out of Medicaid and eviscerate Medicaid, or it’s going to charge older Americans over younger Americans five times as much as the younger? We don’t have to do that. Let’s come up with the creative ideas to fix the existing law.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.