{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=0C1BB79C-8F0E-4787-8DFD-2F2D05C9E5CC", "Democrats\u2019 Steps Toward Socialized Medicine Would Cost Some Americans their Coverage, Others their Lives", "2021-10-21", "2021", "2021-10", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding Democrats\u2019 reckless tax and spending spree:\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s little confusion about the devastating economic impacts Democrats would bring about by ramming through their reckless taxing and spending spree: more taxes, more debt, and more painful inflation.\n\n\u201cBut this isn\u2019t some collection of well-intentioned policies whose price tag has just gotten dangerously out of control.\n\n\u201cThe policies, themselves, would mean real pain for American families.\n\n\u201cCase in point: the heavy-handed mandates that would restrict choice and access to affordable, lifesaving healthcare.\n\n\u201cDemocrats want to axe the private insurance plans that millions of Americans have chosen and prefer. They want to build new federal health programs and expand the ones that exist today, heaping more than $550 billion in new expenses on taxpayers to insure less than 4 million more people.\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s the truth: the overwhelming majority of Americans today have access to healthcare. Democrats just don\u2019t like the private plans that most Americans choose.\n\n\u201cThen, there\u2019s the plan to heap hundreds of billions of dollars in new programs and huge pools of additional people into a Medicare system that experts say is already dangerously close to insolvency. A huge, risky leap toward Medicare-for-All, at the expense of the stability and the security of the actual Medicare system that millions of seniors rely on right now.\n\n\u201cDemocrats want to pour cold water on America\u2019s world-leading medical innovation sector by imposing socialist price caps on prescription medicines. In another example of Democrats\u2019 magic math, the rationale here is apparently that calling something cheaper makes it so!\n\n\u201cIn reality, research tells us this would mean fewer new treatments and cures. By one analysis, these price controls could cause up to 20 times as much lost life over a decade as the once-in-a-century COVID pandemic already has. Suppressing innovation through drug socialism would literally cost American lives.\n\n\u201cAnd of course, they\u2019re planning to leave behind commonsense protections against taxpayer-funded abortion that had enjoyed consistent bipartisan support for decades.\n\n\u201cMadam President, this isn\u2019t just a runaway price tag. The policies themselves are terrible, destructive things that would make American families\u2019 lives worse. And the end goal, as one liberal House member said just yesterday, is a Medicare-for-All system from before you\u2019re born until you die.\n\n\u201cMore government between families and affordable care.\n\n\u201cMore government between sick patients and lifesaving cures.\n\n\u201cMore reckless ideas from Washington Democrats.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:24:51Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=0C1BB79C-8F0E-4787-8DFD-2F2D05C9E5CC"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.326720394194126, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}