Univeral Health Coverage

Floor Speech

Mr. COURTNEY. Today, February 4, 2009, will go down as a historic milestone in America's long journey towards universal health coverage. In a few hours, with a bipartisan vote, the House will pass an expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program, extending health insurance to 4 million more American youngsters, keeping a promise that President Obama made to the American people to get this much-needed change accomplished. He did it in 2 weeks' time. I would just say, contrast that with the 2-year rancorous partisan debate that divided this country over the issue.

The new Congress and the new President are delivering on this incredibly important step towards extending health coverage to children--strengthening their dental coverage; strengthening their mental health coverage; locking in for States like Connecticut eligibility so that working families' children will be insured and will be covered.

Building on that success, extending health IT technology to our health care system, which is included in the stimulus package, extending people with unemployment Medicaid coverage, we are going to move forward as a country towards universal health coverage. Today will go down in history as an important step forward to accomplish that much-needed goal.

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