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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Bring market forces to bear on health care insurers. Creating a health care 'exchange,' one of the better ideas included in House Bill 3200, creates affordable, accessible and portable insurance for millions of Americans.
Ultimately of course, parents must take responsibility for their children's health, .. Our message must be: What you don't know about your children's health insurance options can hurt them. It's up to you to find out if your child is eligible for this health insurance.
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.
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.
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 many Americans, including many who are employed, going to the doctor when they fall ill or become injured may not be an option because of the absence of health insurance.
Thanks to President Barack Obama, under the Affordable Care Act, millions more people will be eligible for health insurance, including many people with HIV.
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.
Given the fact that poverty is growing, more and more Americans are losing health insurance, health care costs are going up, the middle class is shrinking, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider. That speaks to the weakness of the opposition. People do not like George W. Bush. But I think it's fair to say that they are not flocking to the Democratic Party, or see the Democrats as a real alternative.
Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it.
I think that the risk to all the progress we've made was at stake in the election because not just the president-elect but a lot of members of Congress, including now the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, have said that their principal agenda was to undo a lot of this progress. But as I've been talking about over the last several days when it comes to health care, the gains that we've made are there. Twenty million people have health insurance that didn't have it before. The uninsured rate is the lowest it's ever been.
Women tend to need the healthcare system more because we bear children. Insurance companies - not all of them, but many of them - 'gender-rate.' Women may pay 40% more for their health insurance than men do.