[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15241]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    THE NEED FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Connolly) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of 
long overdue health care reform. We've been talking about health care 
reform since the administration of Harry Truman. It's time for action.
  Among the Jeffersonian rights enumerated in the Declaration of 
Independence, the first was the right to life. And yet, today, with 
health costs spiraling out of control for millions of Americans, that 
right to life becomes more and more difficult to manage.
  While the need for some level of reform is clear, whatever reform the 
Nation agrees upon must respect the right of the individual to continue 
to select their own physician. Assisting some Americans in accessing 
health care must not come at the expense of restricting health care 
access to others. We cannot have a government-imposed regime. We must 
respect people's right to maintain control over their current health 
care access and health care insurance.
  Having said that, America currently has the most expensive health 
care system in the world. In 2006, we ranked first at 15.3 percent of 
our gross domestic product in expenditures for health care. Runner-up 
was Sweden with a socialized health care system. It was at 11.3 
percent.
  On a per capita basis, we spend the most in the world, $5,267 for 
every man, woman, and child in America; and yet, if you look at our 
outcomes, we are in the middling ranks of industrialized countries in 
terms of outcomes. We rank 50th out of 224 Nations in the world in 
terms of life expectancy. As a Nation, we are spending more on health 
care than everybody else, but we're not necessarily getting the 
outcomes we need.
  Our challenge is to make health care costs obviously more affordable. 
A recent USA Today poll showed 21 percent of Americans struggling with 
health care costs, being able to manage it, significantly up from what 
it would have been a decade or 2 decades ago.
  Those who currently have, and like their existing health care 
coverage, still nonetheless often lament the rapidly increasing costs 
of premiums and recognize that we all pay a cost for emergency room 
treatment for those without health care coverage. In fact, it is 
estimated that that costs everybody $1,000 per capita per year because 
of our fellow 46 million Americans who lack health care coverage.
  As we debate the various proposals, Madam Speaker, for reforming 
health care, I would like to propose five principles that certainly 
will guide me and I think many others as we move forward various 
proposals.
  The first is, every child in America should have access to health 
care. No child should go in this country without having access to 
health care. We know that, for example, a child without health care who 
develops appendicitis has five times a negative outcome in terms of 
losing his or her life than a child with health insurance. That's 
unacceptable, it seems to me, as Americans.
  Secondly, nobody should be financially destroyed due to a 
catastrophic illness. It's challenging enough to combat a deadly 
medical condition, but tremendous expenses incurred can wipe out a 
family's savings and, indeed, cost them their livelihood and their 
home.
  Third, insurance companies should not be allowed to cherry pick, and 
I'm a proud cosponsor of a bill that would prescribe that. The whole 
point of having health care insurance is to share the risk. Previous 
existing conditions affect 45 percent of all Americans today, and 
indeed, if we all live long enough, every one of us is going to end up 
with a previous existing medical condition. The health insurance 
companies shouldn't be allow to disqualify people in that case.
  Fourth, we must respect the right of our fellow citizens to choose 
the health care insurance and provider they want.
  Fifth, we must move toward universality of health care coverage. 
Everyone in America should have access to health care in this wonderful 
country of ours.
  Ultimately, we must address health care reform for a number of 
reasons: to provide broader coverage for those currently uninsured; to 
bring down the increasingly difficult costs to businesses, especially 
small businesses, families, and sole proprietors; to reduce the growing 
strain of health care costs on our Nation's deficit; and to improve the 
overall health of our Nation.
  Fiftieth place is nothing to be proud of, Madam Speaker, and I hope 
all of my colleagues will join me in supporting a health care reform 
program that will reposition America as a competitive, successful, and 
healthy society.

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