[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 4, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H267-H268]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     HEALTH INSURANCE FOR CHILDREN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. (Mr. Goodlatte). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, in December I and about 30 other Democrats 
sent a letter to President Clinton requesting that he include a program 
to provide assistance to the Nation's 10 million uninsured children in 
his budget that he would submit to Congress, and I am naturally very 
pleased that in his State of the Union Address tonight the President 
will announce a proposal to have Medicaid cover the 10 million

[[Page H268]]

children who currently lack health insurance.
  In millions of American working families both spouses work and yet 
neither works at a job that offers health insurance benefits, and while 
Medicaid provides coverage for children and families near or below the 
poverty level, many working families make more than the Medicaid 
threshold but not enough to afford health care premiums, and as a 
result millions of working parents remain unable to provide any health 
insurance whatsoever for their children.
  Hoping to expand upon the progress made by last year's passage of the 
Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, congressional Democrats have been working hard 
to develop ways to address this problem. Indeed, many Members here in 
the House, including myself, are working on legislative proposals to 
remedy the problem. But I believe that making health insurance 
available to uninsured children really should be a central part of what 
we do in this Congress.
  It was part of the Families First agenda which was developed by 
Democrats last year to help the average American family meet the costs 
of everyday life, and the attention the President will give this issue 
tonight is sorely needed. It is my hope that Republicans will join the 
President and congressional Democrats in recognizing that making health 
insurance available to all children is perhaps the most important issue 
we will examine here in the next 2 years.

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