[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 20094]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN HEALTH CARE

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, Daniel Webster reminds us on a daily basis in 
a plaque, a stone engraved above the Speaker's rostrum, that in our 
time here in Congress we're supposed to do something that's worth being 
remembered, something valuable. Forty-four years ago today Medicare was 
signed into law. That Congress did something worthwhile. The Congress 
that produced Medicaid did something worthwhile. Both those Congresses 
were vilified, and people said both of those programs were socialism.
  Well, they were wrong; they were American. They were caring programs 
that have helped with people in sickness and getting them healthy in an 
affordable manner. This Congress can do something worthy of being 
remembered by passing national health care and taking care of people 
and extending Medicare and Medicaid to another group of Americans and 
making sure that we're no longer the only civilized industrialized 
country in the world that doesn't have health care for all of its 
citizens.
  It's time that we act and we do what Daniel Webster charges us to, 
and that's to do something worthy of being remembered. Nothing is more 
important than health care.

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