Anniversary of Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

Madam President, this is the 1-year anniversary of the President's signing of health care reform, and I am happy to stand and say it represents one of the most important pieces of legislation in decades. For too long, we let our Nation's health care crisis grow and ignored it. People who said let the market work its will, have to be honest about what the market did. The market started excluding people who had preexisting conditions--and who among us doesn't? The market started charging higher and higher prices for health insurance. The market, unfortunately, was uncontrollable.

We tried to deal with it, to bring pricing under control and deal with the realities families face across America. When I was in the most heated debate about the health care bill with tea party devotees in front of my office in Springfield, I told them: Let me tell you about some of the people in Illinois I have met. At some point, the tea party people said: Stop telling stories, Durbin. We don't want to hear any more stories. Of course, they don't because those stories are the reason we did this. Those stories represent real lives.

Let me tell one of those stories, representing a family who comes from East Peoria, IL. This is Jill and Ric Lathrop. They have two sons, Sam and Nat. One of them has a Superman t-shirt on. They are 12 and 14 years old and they have severe hemophilia. It is a rare and costly medical condition.

Thanks to the twice-weekly injections of blood clotting replacement factor they receive, the boys are able to live happy and healthy lives--and they look pretty darn good in that picture. That lifesaving medication costs roughly $250,000 per child, per year.

For years, the family has lived in fear they would reach the lifetime limit of their insurance plan. That was a reality. Many of these plans had a ceiling that paid no more beyond a certain amount. Well, it happened to them in 2005. The hospital where Ric works as an MRI technician instituted a $2 million lifetime cap on benefits. For most families, that wouldn't even be an issue, but for the Lathrops, who know their annual medical expenses will always total hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep their boys alive, that was devastating.

Rather than waiting for their benefits to run out, the Lathrops moved to Peoria, where Ric found a job that provided insurance without lifetime limits. He moved his family and found a job to get an insurance policy that would keep their boys alive. When the open enrollment period for their health insurance plan rolled around, they waited on edge to see if their insurance would, once again, institute an annual or lifetime limit on care that would force them to move again to ensure adequate coverage for their sons.

Thanks to the bill we passed last year, insurance companies can no longer place lifetime limits on care. Think about what that means to this family who picked up and moved and looked for a new job to get health insurance to keep their boys alive. Is that what America should be? I think not.

Let me be very blunt about this. As good as this law was, it was not perfect. There are things that need to be addressed, examined, and changed. I have said before, and say again, the only perfect law was written on stone tablets and carried down a mountain by ``Senator Moses.'' Everybody else has been trying and hasn't quite hit that standard. So let's be humble about this and be open to change. But let's not repeal this, as the Republicans have called for time and again. Let's not say to the Lathrop family: Sorry. You are on your own if another lifetime limit comes along that may literally endanger the lives of these two beautiful little blue-eyed boys.

That is what this debate is about. It is a story about a real family. That is why the other side hates to hear these stories, because the stories literally explain why stepping backward in time and repealing health care is exactly the wrong course for America.

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