Murphy: Saving Health Care For Millions Of Americans Is A Fight Worth Having

WASHINGTON-U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Tuesday gave a fiery speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate hammering the life-or-death stakes of Republicans' refusal to negotiate with Democrats to end the government shutdown and protect access to health care for millions of Americans. With the ACA's open enrollment period beginning on November 1st, families across the country are facing catastrophic premium increases that will push many to simply forego health insurance altogether. Murphy urged his colleagues to keep up the fight and push for a solution to prevent millions of people from being thrown off a health care cliff.

In his speech, Murphy railed against the manufactured pain Donald Trump and Republicans have created for millions of working families across this country: "This is madness. The President of the United States is playing with people's lives right now. He may think it's funny. He may think he's scoring political points, but this is ultimately leading to ruin for people. And it is yet another example of the enthusiasm that this President and many of his enablers here in the United States Senate have for ruining people's lives so as to be able to pad the pockets of the very rich, the very wealthy, and the very powerful in this country. Why are we shut down right now? We are shut down primarily because Republicans have refused to negotiate with Democrats on whether or not we should write a budget that intentionally destroys the American health care system."

After traveling to Trump's backyard this week to fight for Americans' health care, Murphy shared the story of one South Florida woman: "Kara Farley told us her story. She had a hard time telling us her story. We had a hard time listening to her story. Kara is a mother of four living in South Florida. She's already a cancer survivor, having survived ovarian cancer, but she just got a new diagnosis: a malignant melanoma. Her husband has a complicated form of diabetes in which he often has seizures if it goes untreated. And for 20 years, it went untreated and he was in and out of the hospital. Why? Because they were uninsured. They could not afford insurance. But the ACA and the subsidies saved them. But now Kara has this new diagnosis. She has visits planned out over the next several months to address, to try to treat this malignant melanoma. Her premiums are not going up by 10%, not by 20%, not by 50%, but by 100%. Her premiums are doubling. They cannot afford that. And so you know what conversation Kara and her husband are having? 'Which one of us is going to survive?' … This is a choice. This is a choice that our Republican colleagues have made to put families in this country through a kind of inhumane misery, deciding which parent will live, just to enrich people who are already making millions of dollars. This is a principle worth fighting for. These people are worth fighting for."

After sharing the human costs of Republicans' cruel inaction, Murphy concluded: "I'm glad to be here on this floor with my colleagues to explain in very real terms what this is about. This isn't about politics. This isn't about point scoring. This isn't about elections. This is about human beings that Republicans have intentionally decided to leave in a ruinous condition. And Democrats - I'm proud of my Democratic colleagues for standing up and fighting for a very simple premise: that if we're going to pass a budget, it better be a moral budget. If we're going to pass a budget, it better be a budget that doesn't send the health care system of South Florida and the health care system of many other parts of this country into a death spiral. As we left those families yesterday, they were begging us to keep up this fight… It's a fight worth having."

A video of the speech is available HERE. A full transcript of the speech is available below.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I thank my colleague from Connecticut for convening us here. This is a pretty normal thing that we do on a regular basis. We come down here and talk about something that we care about. But it is kind of worth noting that this is a very unusual moment. Most of the discussions I've had in the last hour are trying to figure out whether we are paying food stamp benefits or we're not paying food stamp benefits. I don't know if the presiding officer or any Republicans who may wander onto the floor of the Senate could help us, but there are millions of really hungry families out there who have no idea whether they're getting nutrition benefits or not. The law says they have to get benefits because Republicans and Democrats have put into the law a requirement that the president, during a shutdown, use a contingency fund which is flush with money, $5 billion, to pay those benefits. The President has, alternatively over the past 72 hours, said he's paying them, he's not paying them, he's going to comply with a court order, he's not going to comply with the court order.

This is madness. The President of the United States is playing with people's lives right now. He may think it's funny. He may think he's scoring political points, but this is ultimately leading to ruin for people. And it is yet another example of the enthusiasm that this President and many of his enablers here in the United States Senate have for ruining people's lives so as to be able to pad the pockets of the very rich, the very wealthy, and the very powerful in this country.

Why are we shut down right now? We are shut down primarily because Republicans have refused to negotiate with Democrats on whether or not we should write a budget that intentionally destroys the American health care system. Republicans passed this Big, Beautiful Bill at the beginning of the year which intentionally sets our health care system on a death spiral. You can't pull $2 trillion out of the American health care system without parts of it collapsing. Massive cuts to Medicaid, massive cuts to the Affordable Care Act, cuts to funding that goes to nursing homes. 17 million people losing their health care. A couple million immediately because of these Affordable Care Act subsidy cuts but, over time, 17 million people.

That is a cataclysm. That is a cataclysm. The reason we're shut down is because Republicans are refusing to negotiate with Democrats over our "unreasonable" demand that we just make the pain of the Big, Beautiful Bill a little bit less acute this Fall, when premiums are scheduled to go up on American families by thousands of dollars. These people are worth fighting for. This principle - that the government shouldn't exist to transfer money from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy and the powerful - is a principle that is worth fighting for.

Yesterday, Senator Warren, Senator Smith and I took a trip down to South Florida. Why did we go to South Florida? Because in South Florida is the highest concentration of people in this country who rely on the Affordable Care Act for their health care coverage. In fact, in many parts of South Florida, one out of every four families gets their health care from the Affordable Care Act. They also need these subsidies to be able to make their health care affordable. The decision that we are making now - are we going to continue the subsidies or are we not - it is a matter of life and death for everybody who relies on those subsidies in America, but in particular in South Florida.

And I guess I just want to share what we're talking about here. We met a gentleman by the name of Seth Grossman. He is a small business owner. He's a husband. He's a father. He's got a wife with a diagnosis of cancer. And the ACA is what pays their medical bills. He just went on to the exchange to see what his increase will be for the year. $1,000 would have been hard to handle. They run on a pretty tight budget. $5,000, well, that's a head scratcher, how the Grossmans are going to figure that out. $10,000, wow, that would be pretty bad. $18,000 increase for the Grossmans for their health care! An $18,000 increase in their premiums because of what Republicans did intentionally so that they could muster up enough money to give a massive tax cut to corporations and the wealthy. My Republican colleagues decided to increase premiums on the Grossmans by $18,000 - they got a cancer diagnosis that they are trying to pay for - just so that they could help out their wealthy and powerful friends.

But it gets worse. Kara Farley told us her story. She had a hard time telling us her story. We had a hard time listening to her story. Kara is a mother of four living in South Florida. She's already a cancer survivor, having survived ovarian cancer, but she just got a new diagnosis: a malignant melanoma. Her husband has a complicated form of diabetes in which he often has seizures if it goes untreated. And for 20 years, it went untreated and he was in and out of the hospital. Why? Because they were uninsured. They could not afford insurance. But the ACA and the subsidies saved them. But now Kara has this new diagnosis. She has visits planned out over the next several months to address, to try to treat this malignant melanoma. Her premiums are not going up by 10%, not by 20%, not by 50%, but by 100%. Her premiums are doubling. They cannot afford that. And so you know what conversation Kara and her husband are having? Which one of us is going to survive? We can't afford health care for both of us so, for our kids, which one of us should get treated and which one of us shouldn't? Why are you putting people through that just so that you can give a new $270,000 tax cut to the very wealthy in this country?

This is a choice. This is a choice that our Republican colleagues have made to put families in this country through a kind of inhumane misery, deciding which parent will live, just to enrich people who are already making millions of dollars. This is a principle worth fighting for. These people are worth fighting for. We are shut down today because Republicans refuse to even talk to Democrats about a path forward to make sure that Kara and her husband don't have to choose which of them live.

It's an abomination that we're even in that conversation. And I'm glad to be here on this floor with my colleagues to explain in very real terms what this is about. This isn't about politics. This isn't about point scoring. This isn't about elections. This is about human beings that Republicans have intentionally decided to leave in a ruinous condition. And Democrats - I'm proud of my Democratic colleagues for standing up and fighting for a very simple premise: that if we're going to pass a budget, it better be a moral budget. If we're going to pass a budget, it better be a budget that doesn't send the health care system of South Florida and the health care system of many other parts of this country into a death spiral. As we left those families yesterday, they were begging us to keep up this fight, begging us not to give in, begging us not to cave. It's a fight worth having.

I yield the floor.