Health Care And Unemployment Benefits

Floor Speech

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we just heard the Republican leader of the Senate speak, as he does every day, against health care reform. He has opposed it from the start. He is consistent. His message is consistent. He does not propose any alternative. There is no Republican health care reform bill anyone has seen or heard of. He comes in each day and tells us what is wrong with the efforts underway in Congress, both the House and the Senate, to change the health care system of America.

Unfortunately, most Americans--certainly most business people--understand that the current health care system in America is unsustainable. The cost of health care is going up so fast that fewer and fewer businesses are protecting their employees and fewer and fewer individuals can afford to buy health insurance. And those who buy health insurance know the reality of what it means today. They know that when they need it the most, many health care insurance companies turn them down. People who had paid for a lifetime into a health insurance plan they had never used finally faced an accident or a diagnosis or a critical illness, went to their doctor, headed to the hospital, only to find that now they were not just going to have to battle an illness, they had to battle their insurance company.

I cannot tell you how many cases have come to my office--so many that we have lost count--asking: As a Senator, will you please intervene with my health insurance company.

The most recent involved a young man who has been battling cancer in my State for years, a heroic battle that I know something about because I know his family. He finally found a drug that worked that his oncologist recommended. It was a new drug, but it was one that worked. For a while, the health insurance company paid for it. Then they announced they were going to cut off payments because it was not an appropriate drug. Do you know how much it will cost his family to provide that lifesaving drug to him each month? It is, $13,000. How long can he last? How long can the savings last? How long can we stand here and tolerate that kind of mistreatment of the American people?

Yet day after day, the Republican leader comes and tells us he is opposed to change; he does not support our efforts to bring about real significant change when it comes to health insurance in this country.

Let me tell you what our bill does--this bill he said we should not pass. It eliminates preexisting conditions. Do you know what that means? When you need your insurance the most and your health insurance company goes back and pulls out your health insurance application and says: You forgot to tell us you had headaches as a teenager or acne and, therefore, we are going to walk away, disallow any medical care. Does that sound outlandish? It is a fact in both instances and in cases that have come to our office--preexisting conditions. Preexisting conditions, a battle that people have to fight all the time with these health insurance companies, would be prohibited under health insurance reform that we are working on.

Or how about their decision to cap the amount of coverage they will provide. You don't know when you get into cancer treatment or serious brain surgery what the ultimate bill is going to be. But the health insurance companies can walk away from you when you are sick and need their help the most.

We know what they do with kids, young people, when they reach the age of 23. It happened in my family. They cut off your children. No more will they cover them. They have to find their own coverage. This bill says we will extend that coverage.

We are basically trying to plug the gaps in health insurance coverage today that haunt American families when they desperately need help. And the Republican minority leader comes to the floor and objects to that, objects to this health care reform. I don't understand where he is coming from.

He says this bill is too long. I have heard the Senator from Kentucky and other Senators say: Why, this bill is 1,000 pages long--1,000 pages. I don't know if there is an appropriate number of pages for health care reform. I don't know if 100 is the right number and 1,100 is too much. I don't know if we should be involved in that kind of silly argument.

What we are talking about here is a piece of legislation that will impact health care for every American and will literally address one-sixth of the American economy. Mr. President, $1 out of every $6 spent in America is spent on health care. We are working now to bring down costs and create a system that is fair, stable, and secure for people across the United States. If it takes 2,000 pages, does that mean the bill is wrong?

The other day on the floor, I asked one of the Republican Senators who was talking about the bill being too long, first I said: Have you seen it? Of course he had not because the bill is currently being written. The final bill is not before us. It will be on the Internet for at least 3 days before it is considered on the floor, as it should be, but there is no final bill.

Then I asked him how many pages is the Republican alternative on health care reform. He stumbled a little bit because there is no Republican alternative to health care reform. Speeches, yes, but nothing in writing.

When we went through the HELP Committee and marked up the bill--one of the bills that is part of the package being considered--there were 150
Republican amendments that were accepted. You would think that after 150 Republican amendments were accepted out of about 500, perhaps one Republican Senator would vote to move the bill forward. Not a single one, not one in the HELP Committee would vote to move it forward.

It is unfortunate, but I think Majority Leader Reid is right. There appears to be, by most Republican Senators, a strategy to delay this as long as possible and to oppose all change. I don't know if you can build a political party on that. I certainly don't believe you can build a nation on that. And you certainly cannot address the concerns that people express to us every day about the current cost of health care and the need for us to have health insurance we can trust and the need to bring more and more people into health insurance coverage.

The bill before us, that we will vote on at 5 o'clock today, is about unemployment compensation. It is a recordbreaking bill. And you know why? Because it has taken us almost 4 weeks by Wednesday to bring up the extension of unemployment compensation benefits. The reason it breaks a record is that historically this was never a debatable item. People said: Of course, we are going to help people who are unemployed on a bipartisan basis, give them a helping hand in a tough economy. Now we are facing an economy with millions of people unemployed and, unfortunately, the Republicans have delayed us for 4 weeks to bring this matter up.

While they have delayed us, thousands of people have lost their unemployment benefits. They are in my office, sending e-mails talking about this, spelling out what it means when you don't have a job, you don't have health insurance, you are struggling to pay the rent or the mortgage payment, trying to pick up some skills to find a new job and the checks end.

We want to extend those unemployment benefits because there are six unemployed Americans for every available job. Even people who are working the hardest to find new jobs are having a tough time. But for 4 weeks, the Republicans have stopped us. And why? They want to offer amendments that have nothing to do with unemployment compensation.

One of the amendments the Senator from Louisiana wants to once again debate is about an organization called ACORN. ACORN has not been in business in Illinois for a long time. It is an organization that is controversial in some sectors. In fact, it has led to four or five votes already on the Senate floor. This Senator has said he wants to hold up the extension of unemployment benefits for thousands of Americans so he can debate again another effort to criticize ACORN.

I suppose it is an important speech to him but not as important as that unemployment check is to thousands of people in Louisiana and Illinois who don't receive it because he and others on his side of the aisle have held up this bill for no good reason.

We have work to do. We need to create a safety net for those who have lost their jobs. We need to push forward on the President's recovery and reinvestment program that is creating jobs to put people back to work, and we need to sit together--I hope--come together and find a way to expand the number of jobs in this economy. We cannot do it if it takes 4 weeks for us to provide an unemployment check for someone in my home State who has been out of work for a year and is desperate to keep his family together.

That is the reality of what this issue is all about, the reality of the strategy of the party on the other side of the aisle. Whether it is unemployment benefits or health care reform, they believe if they delay long enough, somehow the clock will run out, the calendar will end, and we will do nothing. We cannot do that.

For the unemployed people in this economy, for those counting on us for real health care reform, we must do better. I urge my colleagues--I hope--on the other side of the aisle--a few of them--to step forward and say this is an issue that goes way beyond politics. I hope they join us in providing unemployment benefits long overdue.

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