[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19554]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           PUBLIC HEALTH CARE WILL COMPETE WITH PRIVATE PLANS

  (Ms. DeGETTE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Speaker, anybody who says that we don't need to 
reform our health care system is ignoring the fact that we have the 
most expensive health care system in the world, but we have some of the 
worst results among industrialized nations.
  We have one of the worst results in maternal and child safety. We 
have one of the worst results in infant mortality. Yet at the same 
time, our costs continue to go up. Health care premiums doubled in 9 
years, growing faster than wages. Health care costs are the leading 
cause of bankruptcy in the United States right now; and in the next 10 
years, $1 out of every $5 will be spent on health care.
  The bill that we are looking at in Energy and Commerce is a good 
bill. It allows people who like their health plans to keep them; but it 
also puts forward a public option that will compete with those plans, 
not government-run health care but it takes the insurance companies' 
profit margin out of it and makes them compete on behalf of the 
American people. We need to pass health care now.

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