[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19143]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     COMMONSENSE HEALTH CARE REFORM

  (Mr. KIRK asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, the worst State for health insurance in the 
country is New Jersey at $5,500 a patient. The best is California at 
$2,500 each. California has lawsuit reform to reduce the need for 
expensive defensive medicine and larger insurance pools to lower 
average risk
  For this Congress, Republican moderates wrote a health reform bill to 
repeat these successes, lowering the costs for all Americans and 
expanding coverage. Indications are we will not be allowed to vote on 
these commonsense reforms. Instead, we will vote on a bill that is 
1,000 pages long, at $1 billion a page, costing $1 trillion, raising 
taxes in the teeth of this recession to marginal rates higher than 
France.
  I urge Members to reject this bill and put forward a commonsense set 
of reforms that will lower health costs without raising taxes.

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