OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Public Health Care Will Compete With Private Plans

Date: July 28, 2009
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Health and Health Care


PUBLIC HEALTH CARE WILL COMPETE WITH PRIVATE PLANS -- (House of Representatives - July 28, 2009)

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Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Speaker, anybody who says that we don't need to reform our health care system is ignoring the fact that we have the most expensive health care system in the world, but we have some of the worst results among industrialized nations.

We have one of the worst results in maternal and child safety. We have one of the worst results in infant mortality. Yet at the same time, our costs continue to go up. Health care premiums doubled in 9 years, growing faster than wages. Health care costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States right now; and in the next 10 years, $1 out of every $5 will be spent on health care.

The bill that we are looking at in Energy and Commerce is a good bill. It allows people who like their health plans to keep them; but it also puts forward a public option that will compete with those plans, not government-run health care but it takes the insurance companies' profit margin out of it and makes them compete on behalf of the American people. We need to pass health care now.

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