Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I was watching the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, and I was pleased to see that they were moving along in adopting health care reform and in moving it out of committee. It couldn't be too soon.

The bottom line is that we've heard more reports about how more and more people have no insurance in this country and that insurance is increasingly becoming unaffordable. I know that the Democrats in both the House and the Senate and, hopefully, some Republicans, are moving forward with health care reform. We are trying to get it done by the end of this year, and it really is important.

People need to have affordable insurance. They need to have choices. I think we need a strong public option as well because that will create competition with private insurance. It will bring down costs, and it will allow more people to find affordable insurance.

The problem is not getting any better. It's getting worse every day, and health insurance reform needs to be done here in the House, in the Senate, and it needs to be sent to the President as quickly as possible so we can deal with this major problem that we face in this country. I would like to see it done in a bipartisan way.

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