[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19392]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE MATH

  (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, some are urging Congress to back a $1 trillion 
government health care bill because they claim 50 million Americans are 
uninsured. But when you hear the rest of the story, the numbers fall 
apart. While the Census reports that 45.7 million people lacked 
insurance during some portion of the year, we find that 9.5 million are 
non-citizens or illegal aliens, 12 million are eligible for public 
programs but have not bothered to enroll, 9 million lacked insurance 
for less than a year, and 7.3 million make over $84,000 a year but have 
chosen not to buy insurance.
  When you do that math, you find that there are 7.8 million lower-
income, long-term, uninsured American citizens. But this smaller number 
is not big enough to justify $1 trillion and raising your taxes to 
rates higher than France, which is why congressional leaders hope you 
do not look under the hood of their bill or the numbers they use to 
justify it.

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