This is the "transcript" that actually isn't a transcript, but a copy of the words on the teleprompter:
JOE BIDEN:
Good afternoon everyone.
Today we are in
the worst global health crisis.
Donald Trump will self
attempt to strip away healthcare coverage from
tens of millions of families in the United
States.
Strip away the peace of mind for more than 100
Strip away the peace of mind for more than 100
million people with Cree -- with pre-existing
conditions.
If he succeeds, more than 23 million
Americans
will lose their insurance
overnight.
Insurance could discriminate or deny
services or drop coverage for people
living with pre-existing conditions like asthma,
diabetes, cancer and so much more.
Perhaps most cruelly, debt
-- if Donald Trump has his way,
those with complications
with COVID-19 could become
pre-existing conditions.
Checkup premiums, simply because
of the battle they survived
fighting coronavirus.
Those survivors have
struggled and won the fight of their lives
would have their piece of my
mind is stolen and
at that moment they needed it most.
They would live their lives caught in a vice
between Donald Trump's twin legacies.
His failure to protect the American people from
Dick coronavirus and
his heartless crusade to take healthcare
protections away from their American
families.
I've called on Donald Trump to withdraw his
lawsuit.
Today am renewing that.
Mr President,
stop trying to get rid of the affordable care
act.
Stop taking away people's healthcare and
their peace of mind.
Now more than ever,
stop trying to steal
their peace of mind.
I cannot comprehend the cruelty.
It's driving him to inflict this pain on the
very people he is supposed to serve.
One of the families of the affordable care act
has been a family who
lives here in Pennsylvania.
Stacy with four-year-old children
heard the most devastating
news a parent can hear.
Both of her twins have been
diagnosed with
leukemia.
It wrenches your entire walled off its axis.
The little
very last thing on your mind, the very last
thing that should be on your mind
is whether you can afford the treatment for
your children.
When Stacy's twins got sick, there was no
affordable care act.
So after draining days and endless nights
harrowing stem cell transplants into fickle
ways of hope and fear as
they gradually,
they still faced the future.
They still face a future
where the twins can be denied
coverage
for the rest of their life because he had a
preconditioning
-- pre-existing condition.
For Stacy,
they can focus on the fight that matters to
save their children.
Stacy's twins won their fight.
They beat cancer.
Now they are 22 years of age, Jan is
studying early education and Allen
just graduated in international
studies.
Because of the law,
the insurance company can no longer deny them
coverage because they are survivors of cancer.
A pre-existing condition.
I'm proud of the affordable care
act.
In addition to helping people with pre-existing
conditions, this is
the law that's delivered vital coverage for 20
million Americans that do not have health
insurance.
The law that bars insurance companies
from capping American benefits.
And from charging women
more for insurance simply because they are
a woman.
It's a law that reduces prescription drug costs
by nearly 12 It's a law that reduces
prescription drug costs by nearly 12 million
seniors.
They would see their cost spike because the
Medicare donor hole would have suddenly reopened.
And their cost would have gone up
precipitously.
It's a law that saves lives.
But now, in the middle of the worst
public health crisis, and modern history, at
least since the pandemic of 1918, Donald Trump is
suing to take
millions of more
Americans back to the way things were before.
It's cruel, heartless, callous, and it's all
because in my view, he cannot abide the thought
of letting stand one of President Obama's
greatest achievements, the affordable care act.
We have seen that same callousness
in his handling of the coronavirus.
Just over three months ago,
as most Americans were first coming to grips
with this unprecedented scale of danger,
this pandemic,
President Trump
publicly claimed, "anyone
that wants a test, anyone,
can get it".
It simply was not true.
And he knew it.
Then five days ago,
and his campaign rally and also, Oklahoma
he admitted
telling people, "
we have to slow the testing down.
Slow down, please."
He actually said it.
In his our 50 minute
speech.
Slow the testing down, please.
Spokespeople tried to say that he was joking.
But then Trump himself said he was not joking.
He told testing, "a double bed
-- a double edged sword."
Let's be crystal clear about what he means by
that.
Testing unequivocally saves lives.
And widespread testing is the key
to opening our economy again.
That's one edge.
That's one edge of the sword.
The other edge
is that he thinks that finding out that more
Americans are sick will make him look bad.
That's what he's worried about.
He's worried about looking bad.
Donald Trump needs to
stop caring about he looks and
start caring about
what is happening in the rest of America.
The number of cases is increasing in 29 states.
Were going to be dealing with this for a long
time.
Trump can't wish it away.
He can't bend it to meet his political wishes.
There are no miracles coming.
We are not going to have to
wait for this miracle because none is coming.
Were going to have to step up as Americans,
all of us and do the simple things and of the
hard things.
To keep our families
safe and to reopen our economy and put this
pandemic behind us and sadly, we will have to
do without responsible leadership coming out of
the White House.
It's up to us, all of us, and we will have to
move
-- to wear our mask.
I have mine off because we are social distance.
I wear it everywhere I go.
I know as Americans,
it's not something we are used to.
But it matters!
All the evidence from all over the world tells
us that it just might be the single
most effective thing that we can do!
We are going to have to social distance like we
are here today.
It's not easy.
It seems so strange to us.
Not as Americans but as human beings.
We are built to talk, laugh, hug, gather with
other people.
I know that I am and I know you are.
For now we have to social distance.
It matters.
We are going to have to find a way to keep our
economy running as we bring the number of
cases down.
The president wants us to believe there is a
choice between the economy and public
health.
Amazingly he still hasn't grasped for the
most basic fact of this crisis.
To fix the economy,
we have to get control over the virus!
I will say it again, to fix the economy, we have
to get control over the virus.
He's like a child.
Who can't believe this is happening to him.
All his whining and self-pity.
This pandemic did not happen to him.
It happened to all of us.
And his drama is not to whine about it, his job
is to do something about it.
To lead.
If I have the honor of being president, I
promise you I will lead.
I will do everything I can to take
responsibility and ease this burden on you and
your families.
I will put your family first.
That will begin with a dramatic expansion of
health coverage.
And bold steps to lower healthcare costs.
We need a public option.
Now more than ever.
Especially even more
than 20 million people are unemployed.
That public option will allow every American,
regardless of their employment status, the
choice to get a merit -- a Medicare
life plan.
It will force private insurers to keep
coverage low.
For the first time, you will have to
compete with your business
with the public ensure that does not have to
make a profit.
We will lower premiums for people buying
coverage on their own.
By guaranteeing that no American ever has to
spend more than 8.5%
of their income on health insurance.
That number will be lower for lower income
people.
All the details of this plan will be laid out in
the next few weeks.
We are also going to further reduce cost by
making it less
expensive for Americans to choose plans with
out-of-pocket expenses.
By lowering
prescription drug prices.
By adding the practice of so-called
surprise buildings.
-- Surprise billings that can
leave you with
unexpectedly high bills after leaving the
hospital.
My plan lowers healthcare cost, gets
us
to universal coverage quickly.
When Americans desperately need it,
now.
Families are
really needing it right now.
During illness, forcing into risky choices,
losing their employer plan in droves as their
employers
go out of business or have to suspend
business.
They need lifelines, now.
Now.
That's what the families here today deserve.
That's what the families all across this nation
deserve.
They don't need a president going to
court to deny them the healthcare
they now have.
They need a president
who will go into the White House and fight
like hell
to make sure that they get the health care that
they need.
If Donald Trump
refuses to end his senseless crusade, I
look forward to ending it for him.
And working quickly
with Congress to dramatically ramp up
protections to get Americans universal
coverage and lower healthcare costs as soon
as humanly possible.
This is my promise to you.
When I'm president,
I will take care of your health care coverage
and your family the same way I would my own.
This is personal to me and my wife, Jill.
When I was sworn into the United States
Senate, next to a hospital bed,
my wife and daughter had just been
killed in a car crash and a ligand
the bed were my two young boys.
Surviving boys.
I could never imagine
what it would've been like
if we hadn't had healthcare.
Healthcare that we needed.
That we needed immediately.
40 years later,
one of those little boys
my grown
son,
after having been the Attorney General and
coming back from Iraq for a year,
had contracted
a fatal cancer.
The question was, whether or not he could
survive it, the question was how long
he would have to live.
How many months.
I remember sitting in the hospital,
with my two other children, Hunter and
Ashley.
I remember thinking, and I give you my word to
this. What in the hell would I do
if the insurance company
was allowed to do what they could've done
before the affordable healthcare act.
They will come in and say you have run out of
time.
You have run out of your coverage.
So for the last
two, three, four, five painful months dying
on your own.
Suffer in peace.
I can't fathom
. I cannot fathom
a parent having to go through that.
Which is exactly what happened to many
families before the affordable care act.
So Amy, I understand.
When I say I will take care of your health care
coverage the same way I take care of my family.
There's nothing that I take more seriously.
That's my promise to Stacy and Victoria and
Amy.
And to every American.
That's what the presidency is.
The presidency is our duty to care.
A duty to
care for everyone.
Not just to voted for you, but everyone.
All of us.
And no trust is more sacred
no responsibility more solemn, more purpose
more fundamental,
then for a president to do absolutely everything
that he or she can do to protect American lives.
I want every single Americans you know, if
you are sick,
if you are struggling, if you are w
Watch his eyes. He can't stray from the teleprompters for more than 5 seconds at a time.
It's interesting to see where he goes off-script:
This is the "transcript" that actually isn't a transcript, but a copy of the words on the teleprompter: