At cspan. Org, or this and on the free cspan radio app. President ial candidate joe biden, with families in pennsylvania, you talk about health care and the Affordable Care act. He spoke about the importance of widespread testing for coronavirus when reopening the economy. Mr. Biden 100 Million People with preexisting conditions. ,f the president wins this case he keeps saying he is going to cover preexisting conditions, but he has not figured out anyway that is possible to do that. Absent what we have done. And the other thing we have to talk about later, if im elected, i have a plan to significantly expand access to medicare, as well as medicaid, or so many folks. A lot is going on but i dont want to keep you all fire away, tell me about thank you for this opportunity. I am the mom of a four year old son. He couldnt come today, but this is a picture of him. He loves superheroes and star wars and anything outside, he is a typical fouryearold boy, but underneath all that, he has a lot of medical issues going on. He has a disease called mitochondrial disease. That affects basically every cell in the body. He goes through a lot. He has spent half his life in the hospital. We have 30 specialists that we see between lee. He has four therapists we are seeing all the time and about to add more to his regimen. Things change for him daily sometimes. I echo many of the things that they have shared, when he was first born and started having. Ssues, i had my own insurance sometimes, we were spending 3500 a month out of pocket on top of everything else. He is on something called tpn, which feeds into his heart. Mr. Biden why dont you explain that to the press knows . He has a permanent line that goes into his chest, into his heart. They create a solution for him every week that has to vitamins and minerals, nutrients, fluids that he needs, that is how he is fed, through that central line. That caused it over 80,000 a month just for that alone, on top of everything else. Thanks to aca, he was able to qualify for medicaid because we were very close to having to look at bankruptcy. We were using credit cards, we were having to make the decision, do we pay the electric bill or by his medication . So many of his medications are also very expensive. Another thing that the aca has afforded us is home care nursing. That is something private insurance is not pay for. He requires hospitallevel care ,very day and because of that because of aca, he is able to be home with nurses in his community, part of everyday life , instead of being in a hospital. That means the world to us. Quality of life is everything. He has some any opportunities ahead of him and because of aca, he is going to be able to see that through. Another concern, what happens when he is 26 . These are the fears we have as families moving forward through this. Mr. Biden the president is proposing cutting medicare by 700 billion. In addition to the formal care act. There is so many people in your situation come up with a rare disease, so many people with similar kinds of needs. The costs are just beyond capacity for anyone to handle unless you are a multimillionaire. Hello. Way, bobby says i was just talking to him. How are you guys doing . Ok, how are you . Mr. Biden tell me about you. I know all about you, but tell me. Tell me about the twins as well. My name is stacy. This is one of my twins, jan. Jan is 22. When jan and her identical twin sister madeline had been diagnosed when they were four, which required stem cell transplants, which they have at the hospital in pittsburgh Childrens Hospital of , their procedure, the stem cell transplants, it isnt readily inspected incredibly expensive. This is before the Affordable Care act. Let me correct that, the Patient Protection. We did hit a one milliondollar cap on our employerbased coverage. Fortunately, and unfortunately, were able to we have four children, the twins are our oldest. I had a toddler and i was pregnant with my fourth when we this is cancer. My husband was able to take family medical leave in order to help. We would go back and forth and tagteam staying at the hospital and see them taking care of my son. There was no income coming in because it is unpaid. We kept the coverage but it was expensive. When you have nothing coming in and everything going out, we. Nded up filing bankruptcy fortunately, they were able to go on to kate as a secondary through the state, which did help pick up some things, but we did not sign up for that until after we had went bankrupt. Not only is the Patient Protection so important to me for my kids, for the Patient Protections, but one of the reasons i voted for you and president obama back into thousand seven in 2007 is because he understood what it was like to watch your mom my mom died at cancer at 52. She put off going for care because she couldnt afford it. She was old school, she was going to wait and go when she could up ford afford to pay for it. She was paying off a previous medical issue, so she was waiting to pay that off and by the time she went, it was too late, the cancer spread and she passed away. After reading president obamas plan that he got it because of his mom, and i knew in my heart that you would both see this through and you did and here we are. Here we are, we couldnt save my mom, but we can help our by not discriminating against them and making sure they can stay on our insurance until they are 26. Jan had to leave college for some Health Issues and has now gone back at 22 to continue a degree in education. 26, it is important that we are able to see that through. Care. Ge for the chronic my kids were only two of over 15,000 kids a year diagnosed with cancer. 400,000 of over Childhood Cancer survivors in this country. There is 400,000 children with the existing conditions and that is just cancer. Juvenile not include diabetes or what your son has, the list goes on and on. How can we, in good conscience, take that away from our children . I just dont get it. Mr. Biden well, i dont get it either. I act is that, you know, the concern about whether or not the reason we everybody forgets why we allow people to policy their parents until 26 is because of the financial crisis, a whole generation lost access to good its, access to insurance, made a gigantic difference for people. The preexisting conditions made a gigantic difference. Also, being able to afford to get basic coverage. Homet both my parents at and they were each lived with me the last part of their lives and my wife lost both of her parents at home as well. What i think the vast majority of the American People understand is that for the significant part of the population, there is nothing be inatching your child distress. , i am probably the only person who got sworn in in a hospital with my two sons after my wife and daughter had been killed in an automobile accident. I dont know what i would have done had i not had insurance at the time. This is before the Affordable Care act. Home, oneon came little boy grew up to be they have both grown, one of them became the attorney general of delaware, a poor hero, decorated, coming home from a year after being in iraq and states for glioblastoma, months to live, whether you will be able to beget, just how long. I used to sit there and think, this is gods truth, wonder, what would have happened had she made it for 17 months in real pain . What would happen if they had come with six months left to go and said, suffer in peace, you have outlived your coverage . I dont know what you would have done. Not just what it does to the patient, but to the parents. I think it is important, i appreciate you all being here, so that we can there are millions of you around the country in similar circumstances. Lost, theat it gets personal piece of this gets lost in this debate. One day at a time. What i did when my son was diagnosed with cancer, i had been Vice President , i visited every major cancer facility in the world, not only the united states, set up a major cancer foundation, the president set up a thing called dealing with my ability to do a lot of research in the administration on how we deal with cancer. 21 canceri left hospitals as well as a total of nine Nobel Laureate who wanted me to continue what we have been doing during the administration, it really matters to people. Chop is a great hospital. My daughter wasnt chop, they diagnosed early on, any problems she had, a hip displacer when she was an infant. Nota not cot it, just caught it had they not caught it, she would have one leg longer than the other. There is a lot of great doctors out there. It seems to me that we should be thinking about health care not as a privilege but as a basic right that everyone is entitled to. Im not 20 take you through how im going to expand health care, but i will take the Affordable Care act and i believe we can get it passed, adding a public auction, a medicare option to ascus increase the the access to other means of health care that are available. You have thousands of people waiting in line to be able to get any kind of Medicare Coverage at home, medicaid. There is a lot we can do and i think the public is ready to do it. What i want to thank u is for your willingness to come in and talk about it to allow us to focus on what is going on right now as we speak. We are in court right now trying to do away with Affordable Care act, you talked about cobra. You know, you have millions of people who have lost their jobs and although they technically are able to continue to pay into cobra, there are tens of thousands of employers out of business. They cant pay at. Pay it. That is why i propose the federal government make up that cobra payment so everybody can keep what they had negotiated, whether they have a job or not. Lot of people are frightened and one of the things i learned a long time ago im supposedly a expert in foreign policy, health care is more complicated than foreign policy. It really is. Think of all the bright people guy you from phds to the who was breaking his neck making sure that we keep the roads open , when they have a chance to sign up, they can reup their insurance, those choices, what are we doing here . It is complicated stuff. In one sense, it simple. Shoulda that a family have to declare bankruptcy, the idea that somebody should be in a position where their child is not able to get the care they need is just the ultimate deprivation. You yourto say, job is about more than a paycheck, it is better place in a community. How can a parent maintain their dignity when they look at their child and realize there is nothing they can do to help them . That is what this is about. Im confident that we are going to be able to, if god for bid, the court makes a ruling, that we can pass a beefed up element of the Affordable Care act and make significant progress because people are realizing what it means and think about it. In the middle of the most Sequential Health crisis in American History since 1918, we are cutting access to insurance . While so many businesses run out of business and are not able to provide it on Business Health insurance that they have . It seems to me to be close to cruel. Mr. Biden good afternoon, everyone. Today, we are in the middle of the worst global Health Crisis in living memory and donald trump will file in the Supreme Court today and attempt to strip away healthcare coverage from tens of millions of families in the united states. Strip away their peace of mind, away from more than 100 Million People with preexisting conditions. If he succeeds, more than 23