Date: 2014-04-02
Speaker: LORETTA SANCHEZ (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Thank you so much to the gentleman from Texas. San Antonio. and New Braunfels. Mr. Speaker. today. we are talking about the Affordable Care Act. This is so. so important as we have seen this week 7 millionplus American enrollees. and I know there are still some who tried to get in at the very end and are in the pipeline. I am hoping we push even closer to 8 million new enrollees into the Affordable Care Act. It is interesting because we over here on the Democratic side have really been working to enroll peoplewe have been working to talk to people about how important it is to have a health care planwhile at the same time we have seen from the other side 50plus votes to try to undercut. to undermine. to eliminate the ACA. but here we are. They were repealing. We were enrolling. Californias enrollment numbers surpassed 1.2 million people this past Monday. which is more than double of any other State. On top of that. the expansion of MediCal. which is our Medicaid piece of this. has covered another 1.5 million lowincome families. so we are pretty excited. California looked at this and said. this MediCal planthis plan of having a health care plan for lower income families. for the members in these lower income familiesis so important. For the first 3 years. it is paid 100 percent from the Federal Government. So. if you are sitting in a State like California and if you have 1.5 million new families who didnt have health care before that was paid for. they were putting up with being sick. doing what we call in Spanish "aguantamos." If you got sick. you wouldnt go to the doctor. You wouldnt go and you wouldnt go. and you would work through. You would go to work. and you would be sick. You wouldnt go until. finally. you couldnt take it anymore. You were really. really sick. Then where would you go? You would go to the emergency room. which is the highest cost place in the entire health care system. Instead of putting up with not having health careinstead of aguantamoswe now have 1.5 million families who are in MediCal and. again. as of Monday. 1.2 million people who are in what we call our exchange. Covered California. This is very. very important. but there is also another piece of this that is incredibly important. which is that now we have to work with people. Now that we have enrolled them for the year. we need to work with people who have never before had a health care plan. They dont know what a primary doctor is. They dont even know what a specialist is. They dont know what the process is to go. They dont know about getting a baseline. Go and get an annual physical for free under these plans. This is for free. We have to teach them. So you go in. You get a relationship with a doctor. You get a physical. You get a baseline. You get your blood drawn. For someone like me. that is incredibly important because. for example. diabetes runs in my family. My granddad died of it. my grandma. my aunt. her five kids. It is 31/2 times more likely to be in Latinos than in the average Anglo in America. It is being able to go and get blood work done so that can you see where you are. whether you have the propensity to get diabetes. for example. because diabetes in over 50 percent of the cases can be stopped. it can be turned back. It is about having some nutritional understanding. being able to eat the right way. sequencing your food. exercising after you eatjust a 15minute walk. There were just two studies that were released this past May that said. if you have a propensity for diabetes but if you walk 15 minutes after you eat. you can cut that propensity by almost 50 percent. This is information that our communities do not have. Lowincome. immigrant communities in particular are less likely to have this kind of information. Now. if they have health care plans and if we teach them how to go and get that baselineget their annual physicals. get their pap smears. get their mammogramsand if there is something wrong. lets work on fixing it. and it takes personal responsibility to do that. I have to get up early in the morning and go and run. I have to go to the gym to ensure that. since the propensity is high for me. I dont get that because it takes some personal responsibilitypersonal responsibility not to eat pizza all the time. and things of that sort. yes. personal responsibility. It takes a health care plan. it takes knowledge. it takes access. These places have to be close by. We have to have clinics and doctors signed up into these plans so we can go to them. It takes cultural knowledge. as you know. being from San Antonio. Some of it is a language barrier. Some of it is just understanding how our community works and how we spread it by word of mouth. rather than go to computers to find our information. Knowing all of this will help us ensure that. now that people are enrolled. they begin to use the plans effectively. and when they use them effectively. we drive down that cost curve that was happening. In California. on average. it was a 17 percent increase in medical health care costs on an annual basis. That was not sustainable. The only people who could have liked the old system were the wealthy or the healthy. If you got sick. you had the money. or you never got sick. but today. we can fix these things. Today. we can fix these things by moving forward with these health care plans and with teaching people how to use them efficiently and effectively. so that all of society becomes stronger and healthier. and that is why we voted to put this in. That is why we have worked so hard. I am so thrilled that the gentleman from Texas wanted to discuss this issue today.