[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19551]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     PROVIDING QUALITY HEALTH CARE

  (Ms. EDWARDS of Maryland asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. EDWARDS of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because, for six 
decades, we have debated about how to fix health care reform, and now 
it is time to stop the debates, the denials and the deceit.
  We have a uniquely American solution that includes a robust public 
plan that will lower costs, increase coverage and provide quality care. 
And for the American people, let's repeat that again: lower costs, 
increased coverage and provide quality care.
  This is really just about what the insurance companies want to fight. 
Everybody watching the daily news, the evening news, knows that to be 
true, and the insurance companies will pull no stops to try to defeat 
health care reform, but we are not going to let them.
  Premiums for Americans have doubled in 9 years, three times faster 
than wages. An American family pays an extra $1,100 a year in premiums. 
It is time for that to stop. Each day, 14,000 people lose health care, 
and today 60 percent of small business owners, their workers and 
families have no health care. That is 28 million Americans.
  So we can create a plan here that eliminates copays, eliminates the 
high cost of deductibles for preventive care, caps out-of-pocket 
expenses and ends the discrimination against preexisting conditions.

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