Carper Speaks on the Senate Floor, Cautions Colleagues on ACA Repeal

WASHINGTON—Today, U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, spoke on the Senate floor about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the dire consequences of repealing the law without an immediate and sufficient replacement.

In his speech, Sen. Carper also reminded his colleagues in Congress that the ACA was created by employing policy ideas long embraced by Republicans.

“If you take these one, two, three, four, five key provisions—the individual mandate, employer mandate, ban on preexisting conditions, subsidies for purchasing insurance and the establishment of state changes—they are in the Chafee bill. They are in Romneycare. Believe it or not, they’re in the Affordable Care Act,” Senator Carper said. “Some of the provisions or aspects of the Affordable Care Act our friends across the aisle have been most critical of are things that were originally their idea.”

Sen. Carper closed his speech by urging his colleagues to work together and agree to a sufficient replacement before attempting to repeal the law, to find some common ground and—most important—use common sense.

“We don’t need the kind of uncertainty, lack of predictability that would be created by repeal without having a very clear picture of what we’re going to replace it with at the same time—not a year from now, not two years, not three years, not four years from now. At the same time. That’s what we ought to do,” Senator Carper continued. “My dad would say to my sister and me, just use some common sense. Well, just repealing the Affordable Care Act and not having something to replace it with immediately that provides coverage just as good—affordable, comprehensive coverage—that would not be very good common sense.”