We should work to de-link health insurance from employment so if you lose your job, your health insurance goes with you and it is personal, portable and affordable.
Once you do lose a job, there are not a lot of social supports for you. You lose health insurance because we have this absurd system in America where health insurance is usually tied to employment. Your income dips. And that's when you get into selling the house.
We have health insurance companies playing a major role in the provision of healthcare, both to the employed whose employers provide health insurance, and to those who are working but on their own are not able to afford it and their employers either don't provide it, or don't provide it at an affordable price. We are still struggling. We've made a lot of progress. Ten million Americans now have insurance who didn't have it before the Affordable Care Act, and that is a great step forward.
High-quality health care is not available to millions of Americans who don't have health insurance, or whose substandard plans provide minimum coverage. That's why the Affordable Care Act is so important. It provides quality health insurance to both the uninsured and underinsured.
For people who have health insurance, we can provide health insurance reforms that make the insurance they have more secure. And we can do that mostly by using money that every expert agrees is being wasted and is currently in the existing health care system.
We now know that Mr. Obama lied to the American people with his pledge 'If you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance.'
You look at something like health care, the Affordable Care Act. And for all the controversy, we now have 20 million people who have health insurance who didn't have it. It's actually proven to be more effective, cheaper than even advocates like me expected.
The result was, of course, that today, tragically, more than 40 million Americans don't have health insurance, and for many, not having health insurance means they don't have access to good health care.
We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state, and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.
Gingrich first backed the concept in 1993, "I am for people, individuals - exactly like automobile insurance - individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance.
Health insurance costs in the United States are on an unsustainable path. I've heard from hundreds of Montanans who are paying thousands of dollars every year for their health insurance coverage and thousands more for deductibles before their insurance provides any benefit.
As a physician and a U.S. senator, I have warned since the very beginning about many troubling aspects of Mr. Obama's unprecedented health-insurance mandate. Not only does he believe he can order you to buy insurance, the president also incorrectly equates health insurance coverage with medical care.
People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are ready for single-payer health insurance.' We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have national health insurance. We are the richest in wealth and the poorest in health of all the industrial nations.
In America, the average playwright makes less than a receptionist in a non-profit theatre. We don't have decent health insurance - or any health insurance at all.
If you have health insurance, then you don't have to do anything. If you've got health insurance through your employer, you can keep your health insurance, keep your choice of doctor, keep your plan.
The premise of insurance is to spread the risk. It's the premise of homeowner's insurance, of car insurance, and of health insurance. It's one reason why it's important to have insurance when you're healthy, so that when you get sick, you won't go sign up just when you get sick, because that increases the cost for everyone.