Health Care

Floor Speech

Ms. RICHARDSON. I would like to show you the headlines from my community; ``It's Official: It's a Stinker.'' And what's a stinker? That, according to the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey, in the largest county in this Nation, 22.3 percent of the people do not have health care insurance. In my district, Long Beach, 18.8 percent; in Compton, 25.5 percent. That's one out of four people are walking around and do not have health care. And that's important to all of us.

Why are we the only industrialized nation that doesn't provide health care? Why is it that for my friends on the other side of the aisle we can spend billions for a war, but we can't spend the same for health care? Something is wrong.

We applaud the Congress and the Senate and Senator Reid for stepping up. We need to do this, and we need to do it now. I'm not willing to look one out of four constituents in the face and say you're not good enough. Everyone deserves health care. And, oh, by the way, it helps all of us.

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