Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, this is the most remarkable of all Chambers where discussions take place, because in this Chamber if you say something that is not true, often enough somebody will believe that it's actually true. What I have heard today on the floor I am just going, well, that's a marvelous thing, when in fact our colleagues on the Republican side want to enact reforms that are already in place. Already in place is the Patients' Bill of Rights. No rescisions. No preexisting conditions. Children being able to stay, or young adults being able to stay on their parents' policies until the age of 26. They say they want it--it's already the law of America. Wow. What are we going to repeal? You are going to repeal that?

You want small businesses to be well taken care of? Well, so do we. That's why, if you employ less than 50 people as a small business you don't have any requirements at all. But if you want to provide health insurance to your employees, wow, the government's going to give you a subsidy, 35 percent now, building to 50 percent in the years ahead. What's wrong with that? Where's the harm to small business? What in the world are our colleagues talking about here? I don't get it. It's in the law already.

Everything I have heard here in the last half hour is the law of America. So why are you repealing it? So you can have the insurance companies get another shot at taking over the care of patients, which is exactly what they do, and exactly what I know because I was the insurance commissioner for 8 years in California, and I know what the insurance companies do. They are the ones that make the decisions. We don't want that to happen. That's why the Patients' Bill of Rights is the law in America today. The Patients' Bill of Rights would be repealed by this H.R. 2. Not good for Americans. Not good. Some 30 million people would lose their opportunity for insurance.

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