TRANSCRIPT: Leader Schumer Joins Senator Murray And Protect Our Care To Call On Republicans To End The Shutdown And Address The Healthcare Crisis
Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today joined Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach, and Americans impacted by rising healthcare premiums to denounce the Republican healthcare shutdown and urge Senate Republicans to negotiate to restore critical tax credits that keep coverage affordable for millions of families.
I want to thank Protect Our Care. We’ve worked with you since we passed the ACA, and you’re doing so much on this vital issue for American families, directly and indirectly. And most important, thanks to the folks on this call who came by to tell their stories, both from Washington State and New York.
This shows it: this isn’t just a bunch of numbers. This is people suffering who don’t know what they’re going to do without healthcare. If you have kids and you see that your premiums will go up $20,000, $15,000 a year, you don’t know what to do. What an awful situation to be in. And Jeremy Koulish is one of those people, and I want to thank him from the Hudson Valley for joining us. We’ll hear from him later, but his story is like so many others, as Leslie [Dach] mentioned. If Republicans refuse to work with us, Jeremy will have to find $15,000 a year. What is he going to do? What if he gets sick? I mean, this is not just a question of affordability—it’s devastating for so many people. And we Democrats are fighting back every step of the way.
Right now, as we speak, millions of people are getting notices and looking around at plans during window shopping. That’s when people can see how bad this is—much worse than anyone ever imagined. For example, thanks to window shopping, we know an average couple in Plattsburgh, New York that’s on the New York Healthcare Exchange pays about $282 a month. You know what it’s going up to? $1,700 a month. $20,000 a year—a 495% increase. For an upstate New York family, a small business owner spending over $20,000 a year on insurance, that’s going to be crippling.
Let me be clear, this shouldn’t even be here right now. Three times we’ve asked the Republicans to vote simply to extend the tax credits, and three times they voted it down – every single time. And so now, 20 million will see their healthcare costs more than double. And for many, it’s even worse. If you’re older, it hits you even harder. A 55-year-old couple in America making about $85,000 a year would not see their premiums double—they would triple—to about $25,000 a year.
We Democrats are fighting back every step of the way. Leader Jeffries and I have tried to get Republicans to negotiate with Democrats and address this crisis. It’s one of the greatest crises Americans have seen. And yet, here we are, day 16 of the shutdown, and just two weeks until open enrollment. We’ve asked them to come negotiate so we can address this, and they’ve said no. They’re too beholden to the billionaires who want all these tax breaks, and they want to cut our healthcare to pay for those tax breaks. The speaker is so afraid of this issue that he’s held the House Republicans on vacation for three weeks—not lifting a finger. Until recently, he said, “Don’t even discuss healthcare” to his House members. But the American people have lifted their voices loudly and clearly across the country. Now he says he wants to talk about healthcare—but he really doesn’t. Not about the kind of healthcare you need. So right now, House Republicans are getting paid and not working, while federal workers are working and not getting paid. Is that a disgrace? The American people don’t have time for this inaction.
Stories like Jeremy’s and thousands of other New Yorkers resonate with all of us across the country. For American families working to get by, that’s who we’re working for. Republicans are holding you, the American family who needs healthcare, hostage.
So, I say to my Republican colleagues: it’s time to negotiate, because otherwise, people will go bankrupt, people will get sick, people will lose insurance. And that prospect for people like Jeremy, for people like our friend from Washington, Leslie, and for so many millions of other Americans—it’s not just bad, it’s devastating. We have to avoid it. We are doing everything we can to address this horrible healthcare crisis that Republicans have inflicted on America.
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