Instructing Certain Committees to Report Legislation Replacing the Job-Killing Health Care Law

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, as I am sitting here listening to this, I am thinking this must be something like Alice in Wonderland. This is the most bizarre debate I have heard in a long, long time.

We need jobs. We need to be focusing on the American economy. This particular resolution has no sense of reality. I have heard debates here and discussions on the floor about association health plans. I know about association health plans. I was the insurance commissioner for 8 years in California, having to deal with these non-insurance programs that left hundreds, indeed thousands of people, holding the bag when the association health plans went belly up. It doesn't make any sense.

California has had tort reform for 30 years. We have in the law today in America a protection for every individual in America from the onerous hands of the insurance companies that have continued over the years to deny benefits, to make the doctor decisions, and to literally put people's lives at risk--it's called the Patients' Bill of Rights, and our Republican colleagues want to repeal that. We have a law that is in place. It should be implemented.

The cost issues that have been discussed here on the floor are really a discussion about what has taken place in the past. The law has yet to be implemented with regard to cost containment, the oversight of the insurance companies. All of those things are in the days ahead, and a market system is available with the exchanges. You want to talk about market, that is how you get there, with exchanges.

Replace, repeal--how bizarre is that? Americans have a protection. Yesterday, our Republican colleagues voted to remove their protections. They gave to the insurance companies once again the power to regulate their lives. We cannot allow that to happen. This step today is just Alice in Wonderland.

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