I am here for my mother and all the Americans who are forced to spend time arguing with health insurance companies instead of focusing on getting well. I am here for the millions of lives that will be touched and in some cases, saved, by health insurance reform. I am here for the small businesses who are forced to choose between health care and hiring. I am here for the seniors who are unable to afford the prescriptions they need.
People being forced to get health care and the insurance companies making millions.
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.
The best thing that is happening with the health care is premiums will come down. We'll have tremendous competition; you know, we're getting rid of the border state lines, and we're going to have tremendous competition. We're going to have insurance companies fighting, like life insurance. You know, we - life insurance, you have these companies that are like - like going all over the place. We're going to have a tremendous - tremendously competitive market and health care costs are going to be forced down.
The majority of Americans receive health insurance coverage through their employers, but with rising health care costs, many small businesses can no longer afford to provide coverage for their employees.
Economically, we are gain weaker. Millions of Americans have no health insurance - including many poor children. if they do not get the care they need, they may become scarred for life; but the President George W. Bush vetoed the children's health insurance bill - evidently we couldn't afford it. But we were talking about just a few days fighting in Iraq.
Before Medicare, nearly half of American seniors were forced to go without coverage because insurance companies were reluctant to insure them - making the chances of having health insurance as a senior the same as getting tails on a coin flip.
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.
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.
It is important to remember the purpose of health care reform: to make sure Americans have access to quality, affordable health care - especially those individuals who were being denied by their insurance companies because they weren't profitable customers.
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.
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.
In 2008, I was one of millions united for hope and change. As 2010 dawns, change looks to me like more of the same. Instead of peace, we got more war. Instead of health care reform, we have an industry win that requires Americans to buy health insurance without any real cost controls.
With the loss of Free Choice Vouchers, hundreds of thousands of workers will now be forced to choose between their employers' unaffordable insurance or going without health care.
Wal-Mart workers make just over $8 an hour, and they must pay more than a third of their health insurance premium if they choose to take the company's insurance. That means just about half of them don't choose to take the health insurance because they can't afford it.
When enacted, health care reform provides generous tax credits to help people afford their health insurance premiums.
I understand that in these difficult economic times, the potential for any additional expense is not welcomed by American businesses. But in the long run, the health insurance reform law promises to cut health-care costs for U.S. businesses, not expand them.