“Mr. President, I wish a happy baseball opening day to everyone. Actually, it started last night, not today, but it sounds better to do it during the daytime. Although it is opening day for Major League Baseball, it also happens to be the last day for Americans to sign up for ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act. To date there are over 10 million newly-insured Americans benefiting from the health care law now in effect, and there are millions more who have changed their insurance because of this legislation. So it is clear Americans are signing up for this quality health care in record numbers–and that is an understatement”, said Senator Harry Reid.
On March 31, 2014 Senator Harry Reid asked for and was granted permission to address the United States Senate regarding health care:
“Mr. President, I wish a happy baseball opening day to everyone. Actually, it started last night, not today, but it sounds better to do it during the daytime. Although it is opening day for Major League Baseball, it also happens to be the last day for Americans to sign up for ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act.
To date there are over 10 million newly-insured Americans benefiting from the health care law now in effect, and there are millions more who have changed their insurance because of this legislation. So it is clear Americans are signing up for this quality health care in record numbers–and that is an understatement.
I also am very happy we have been able to come to an agreement on the Medicare physician payment system. It is a 12-month fix. We need to take action on this to ensure that Medicare patients will be able to see their doctors. But the fact remains this legislation is not perfect. It is not ideal. I wish we could have followed the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Wyden, who came in kind of late. Most of the work was done by Ambassador Baucus before he came in. But he worked really hard, and he wants to pay for it in a way I think is appropriate–to use the unspent money we have from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, called OCO, the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. But at this stage it doesn’t appear it is now going to happen.
This legislation wasn’t some last-minute deal. Senator Baucus worked on this for months, and it is the basis for what we are going to do here today. There were tough negotiations. Unfortunately, the parties could not come to an agreement on what a permanent fix should be. I said that I believe a permanent fix should be what Chairman Wyden suggested and continues to suggest.
But House Republicans, though, chose to pass a partisan bill and increase the number of uninsured Americans and raised the cost of premiums. I believe we should repeal the defective payment system without increasing costs and without limiting access to quality health care. We need to restore sanity to the Medicare payment system without cutting benefits to seniors and without shifting the financial burden to hospital and other providers. We have done enough of that already. But right now we don’t have the votes to do what would be the better thing to do.
So for millions of elderly Americans and their doctors, this fix is good news. It means the promise of accessible, quality health care to our Nation’s seniors is being honored again–this time for another year. So while I am pleased with this temporary patch, I hope it is our last patch.
In the meantime, I extend my appreciation to Senator Wyden, the chairman of the Finance Committee, for his work to bring stability to the Medicare payment system. From the moment he assumed the gavel to become chairman of that committee, he hit the ground running on this issue, as well as reforming the entire Tax Code. As we speak he is also doing some good work on the so-called tax extenders. It is my understanding he is meeting with his committee members today”, said Senator Harry Reid (Source: Congressional Record http://thomas.loc.gov/).