Tax on Bonuses Received From Certain TARP Recipients--Continued

Floor Speech

Tax on Bonuses Received from Certain TARP Recipients--Continued

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, more than a year ago I came to the Senate floor to share stories I had heard from Rhode Islanders who are struggling in our broken health care system. Since then I have been here on many occasions continuing to share those stories and continuing to urge Congress to get to work on legislation to transform our health care system so all Americans can receive the health care they deserve.

Over the past year, with my colleagues in the Senate on the HELP Committee, our colleagues on the Finance Committee--the many colleagues who were active in preparing this legislation and working on the Senate floor--we have worked through differences, ironed out details, and slowly but surely moved toward creating a reformed health care system that will lower costs, cover millions of the uninsured, and deliver the care we need when we need it.

Today, we stand on the brink, on the doorstep, just a few short steps away, from achieving this landmark reform. As we move forward to take those welcome final steps, let's not forget that the deliberate failure to act--as our Republican colleagues recommend--would leave millions of Americans mired in a status quo that consistently--consistently--fails them.

I recently heard from Valerie, a working mother in Warwick, who carried the health insurance coverage for her entire family until she lost her job. The double blow of losing her job and her insurance left Valerie and her husband with very few choices. The choice they faced was a difficult one. Here is what they decided: After paying for costly individual plans for their teenagers, they could not afford coverage for themselves. So they went ahead, covered their kids, and have left themselves exposed to the devastating financial consequences of getting sick while uninsured.

Here is what Valerie wrote to me:

Looking back on our lives, major life decisions have been based upon the availability and affordability of health insurance for our family. I have had to pass up job opportunities and make other major sacrifices to ensure we had affordable insurance. Now that isn't even possible.

Valerie is one of the 14,000 Americans who lose their health care coverage every day we do not act. Mr. President, 14,000 is a very big number, but it is just a number. Behind each one of those 14,000 people is a story like Valerie's and a family who is worried and anxious, perhaps even frightened.

For Emily, a resident of Barrington, the continuation of the status quo would prolong the endless runaround she and her husband have endured to get just one health insurance claim resolved.

Last March, Emily's husband required back surgery. The insurance company preapproved the coverage, assuring him the surgery would be paid for. With this assurance, Emily's husband went to the hospital and went through with the surgery.

Months later, however, the insurance company still had not paid. They began to ask for more information. Emily resubmitted lengthy paperwork, but she heard nothing back. Nine months have now passed--9 months--and the insurer has yet to pay the $17,000 charge for her husband's surgery.

Nationally, insurance company overhead has more than doubled in the past 6 years. It is up more than 100 percent in the past 6 years. It is now estimated to cost America $128 billion. What do you suppose they spent that money on when they doubled their overhead and their bureaucracy? More people to take cases such as Emily's and find more ways to deny and delay their payment.

If we do not change the status quo, there will be even more insurance bureaucracy, even more fighting to delay or deny claims, and even more people such as Emily and her husband who are on the short end of the stick when the insurance companies engage with them.

For Christine, a concerned mother in Providence, the status quo has left her worried sick about her son. Christine has always provided health insurance for her family, but when her son turned 23 years old he became ineligible for coverage under her insurance policy.

In this difficult economy, Christine's son has only been able to find part-time work, like so many other Americans, so many Rhode Islanders. Christine writes this:

It breaks my heart when he expresses to me that he feels insecure and strange that he is not covered medically.

Christine prays that nothing goes wrong with her son that would require medical care, and asks me: ``What is he to do?''

Well, when this bill passes, Christine's son will have something to do. He will be able to stay on her family coverage until he turns 26.

These stories I have shared today--stories from anxious families of fear, uncertainty, and frustration--are the direct result of the rampant dysfunction in the broken status quo of our health care system. I know the Presiding Officer, who comes from Minnesota, sees this in his home State every day.

The legislation we passed in the Senate on Christmas Eve will begin to correct this rampant dysfunction. It will begin to make our system start to work for the American people and not support the insurance companies working against them.

To our Republican colleagues who seek to delay and obstruct this historic reform, I have to say we need to pass comprehensive health care reform so people like Valerie never have to make the choice between health insurance for herself and health insurance for her children.

We need to pass comprehensive health care reform so that people such as Emily and her husband can't be denied care or denied payment or get the runaround from profit-driven insurance companies. We need to pass comprehensive health care reform so that children such as Christine's son can stay on their parents' insurance policies, particularly during this tough economy, until the age of 26, helping them get by during those exciting, challenging, tumultuous years when a young person gets out of college and starts to find their way in the workforce, those years between college and an established career.

These changes will make a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans. I hope all of my colleagues will hit the reset button on their opposition and will think of the Emilys and the Valeries and the Christines in their home States, the thousands of Americans whose lives will be made better in real and important ways by this reform. I urge them to join us in supporting this historic effort.

I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

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