Health Care Reform
Floor Speech
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Mr. ELLISON. Well, what's behind me, if the gentleman will yield, is a simple sign which just talks about the 45,000 Americans who die every year because they are uninsured. You know, 45,000 people sounds like a big number, and the fact is that there are families, there are citizens, there are individual Americans behind every one of those numbers. There is a health care nightmare for every individual represented by each point of that 45,000.
And you know what? America is a good country. We are a compassionate country, and we are a country that will respond to the needs of Americans.
And so, Congressman Garamendi, I want to say that you may be a new Congressman, but you are a seasoned veteran at this fight because you've been working in the area of State government, and State government and local government is where the action is. You have just come straight from the land, right off the battlefield of the campaign, listening to people day after day about the suffering that people are going through, people being dropped by rescission.
You know, I actually had my own little health care nightmare recently, which I don't mind telling you about. I'm the proud father of a 22-year-old young man who is still in college. And we recently got a letter from Blue Cross/Blue Shield telling us that on his 22nd birthday he was going to get a little present. Mr. Speaker, you might guess what that little present is. He's dropped from our insurance. This health care bill says he can stay until he is 26 years old, until he actually has a job. He's a senior in college. He doesn't have--he works at the library, putting books up, helping us get him through college. He's not ready to get out there yet.
So this 45,000 Americans losing their lives every year because of a lack of health care, that is something that we can do something about, we will do something about in a very short order.
And I want to yield back to the gentleman from California because I admire the work that you're doing. You're coming into this Congress with a bang. You're not waiting around for anybody to tell you, John, get up and do something. You're getting up and you're taking charge, and that's the leadership we like.
I yield back.
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Mr. ELLISON. Well, what's behind me is just another little data point which we're trying to get Americans to see here, and Americans know this. Even if they don't know the number, they know it in their gut: Health insurers break profit records as 2.7 million Americans loose coverage. We should--that's worth saying again, I think, Mr. Speaker: Health insurers break record profits as 2.7 million Americans lose coverage.
As Congresswoman Schakowsky, from the great State of Illinois, illustrated just a moment ago, Americans are struggling. People have these high deductibles. They're not even meeting them, and they're still getting rate increases.
Here's a stat for you that I don't have a board for: 60 percent of all the bankruptcy filings are because of medical debt, Americans going to bankruptcy because they can't afford to pay these ridiculous health care bills. These are people who already have insurance.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Seventy-five percent of them already have health insurance. They're going bankrupt.
Mr. ELLISON. Let me yield to the gentlelady from Illinois. Tell the rest of that story: 75 percent have health insurance. Some people think, Mr. Speaker, we're talking about the uninsured, and we are, but that's not the only people we're talking about. Tell the story about the insured.
I yield back to somebody.
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Mr. ELLISON. If the gentlelady will yield, she just used the phrase ``do nothing.'' It just sparked in me sort of a reflection, that is, between the years 2000 and 2006, our caucus on the party opposite really did do nothing to fix health care.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Right. Not our caucus.
Mr. ELLISON. No, the party opposite. The Republican caucus.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Speak the truth, man. The Republicans did nothing.
Mr. ELLISON. The Republicans didn't do anything. But then someone corrected me and said, KEITH, they did do something. They gave us the doughnut hole. I said, well, that's not anything to brag about really. As a matter of fact, in our health care bill we actually make some down payments on the doughnut hole.
You know, they had the House from 1994 to 2006. They had the House, the White House, and the Senate from 2000 to 2006. They absolutely didn't do anything. And if you sit here and listen to this House floor, you would actually get the impression that they were about offering some constructive solutions. But they are not the party of constructive solutions. They are the Party of No, the Party of No, the party of the health care insurance industry; the wholly owned subsidiary, as ANTHONY WEINER is fond of saying, of the health insurance industry. It is time that it come to an end.
I just want to again thank all the colleagues on the floor because you are right, when the President signs that bill, that discriminatory behavior, no. Young people being able to stay on their insurance policy until 26, yes. We will see free preventive care right from the beginning. We are going to see a lot of good things happening right away, and know more good things are going to come in as this bill is rolled out.
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