[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 50 (Wednesday, March 22, 2017)]
[House]
[Page H2298]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1100
          HEALTH CARE OUGHT TO BE A RIGHT AND NOT A PRIVILEGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, let me thank you for 
giving me the opportunity to once again express my opposition to the 
repeal-and-replace healthcare bill before us.
  You know, it is my position that health care ought to be a right and 
not a privilege, especially in a country where we have the skill, the 
knowledge, and the technology to provide it.
  Medicare and Medicaid opened up new opportunities for health care for 
seniors and large numbers of low-income, poor people in this country in 
the mid-1960s. As a matter of fact, before Medicaid and Medicare, some 
of them had never ever been able to acquire any professional medical 
help. As a matter of fact, they lived off remedies and concoctions and 
things that they had learned how to put together.
  Now we come along with some help--Medicare, Medicaid--and the next 
big move was the Affordable Care Act, which was a long time coming, but 
it helped us move to the point where more than 20 million people were 
able to get health insurance who had never had it before, whose only 
outlet was to go to the emergency room of public hospitals and 
oftentimes sit sometimes for 2 or 3 days before they got service, 
before they got attention.
  Now, here we come with something talking about repealing it, taking 
it away. How could we possibly want to go backwards, back to where 
millions of people are wondering every day whether or not they are 
going to be able to go to the doctor and get serviced if they are sick?
  And so I say to my colleagues, especially those who have never had 
the experience of knowing hundreds of people with no care like I have, 
let's say: No, no, no. Forward ever, backwards never.

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