Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, this weekend, when I went home, I went to the laundry.

A gentleman came up to me and said, You know, we've been friends for 40 years, and you're more liberal than I am--I'm a conservative--but let me tell you that I had a heart attack last month. Do you know what it cost? It cost $100,000. He said, Y'all have got to pass something with this health care. It's just too expensive, and if I were in a different situation, I might lose my health care and might not be able to get it.

I had a Halloween party at a friend's house. I'm 60, and my friends are within the margin of error. They're about the same age. Several of them had had cancer, and they talked about how they couldn't get out of their health policies. The premiums were going up. The deductibles were going up, and it was costing them more and more; and they weren't authorizing certain treatments that they needed.

They said, You need to pass that health care bill. It's important.

I went to my local pharmacy, and a lady came up to me, and she told me about what the cost of prescription drugs was doing to her. I told her we were going to close the doughnut hole, that we were going to help her with her prescription drug prices.

We need to get this country's health care policy where it doesn't destroy the financial condition of people's lives. We need to allow them to move on.

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