[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20214-20215]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, we are on the verge of something very 
significant in this body and in this Congress. I am proud to join my 
colleagues from the Ways and Means Committee here tonight to talk about 
the prospects of health care reform in this country.
  I heard the other day that it was in 1912 that President Teddy 
Roosevelt first talked about proposing a national health care system 
for the United States. Today, we're still the only industrialized 
nation that doesn't have health care for all of its citizens. We 
believe it's time, almost 100 years later, to try and get this 
accomplished for the American people.
  Now, a little earlier, my colleague from Texas--my colleague, friend 
and classmate from college--talked about polls that are out this week 
that indicate that the American people have somehow turned against the 
President in his quest to provide health care reform in this country. 
But what he didn't mention was the other part of that poll, which said, 
once people understand what H.R. 3200 does, they overwhelmingly support 
it.
  There have been a lot of efforts to mischaracterize what this bill 
does, what our proposal does. Quite frankly, we're in that sausage-
making process now. We have three committees in the House that are 
working on health care reform. We have two committees in the Senate 
that are trying to accomplish the same thing, and we have a 1,000-page 
bill. There are thousands and thousands of pages of legislation that 
are designed to finally build a kind of health care system that is 
responsive to the needs of the American citizens and, more importantly, 
that is responsive to the Nation, its future and its economy.
  So I'm not surprised that Americans are a little bit uncertain about 
what we're doing here, because, again, we're still in that process; but 
I can assure the people watching tonight, the American public, that the 
battle lines are about to be drawn. This bill is going to come into 
focus as the final committee of three in our House reports the 
legislation out. Over the next month, we will take the argument to the 
American people. We're very confident that, once the American people 
understand what we're doing and how we're going to improve their 
situations, they will overwhelmingly support our proposal.
  What the American people want--and what my constituents in 
Louisville, Kentucky want, what the constituents in New Jersey, in 
Washington, in New York, and in California all want--is basically the 
same thing: they want security for life in health care for themselves 
and for their families. If they're going to lose their jobs, if they're 
going to lose their coverage, if they want to change jobs, if they want 
to go back to school or if they want to make those important life 
decisions, they want the stability of insurance so they don't have to 
worry about whether a preexisting condition or something in their 
health histories will prevent them from being covered. They won't have 
to worry about getting sick and about having their policies rescinded, 
as we've heard much evidence about. Most importantly, they will be able 
to go to sleep every night knowing that a disease or an illness will 
not bankrupt them and will not change their standard of living.

[[Page 20215]]

  These are the things we're about to do for the American people, for 
ourselves as well, because we know, as the Republicans know, if we 
accomplish this major, major goal, we will have the everlasting 
appreciation of the American public. We know that because the 
Republicans have said it.
  We heard a Senator the other day say, Well, if we can defeat health 
care reform, it will be President Obama's Waterloo. He will be 
finished.
  We know from a Republican consultant, Frank Luntz, of his memo 3 
months ago, which states, We cannot afford to let the Democrats succeed 
on getting health care reform. We have no answer to that, but we've got 
to stop it at all costs.
  That's what they've been trying to do. They've been talking about 
things that are nowhere in the bill. They've been talking about 
comparisons with Canada, which, by the way, is the only country in the 
world that does health care the way they do it. As I asked a witness at 
one of our hearings in Ways and Means: Other than hockey, what have we 
ever copied from Canada?

                              {time}  1915

  We can do something very special in this country. We can create a 
unique American solution that will bring choice and competition--the 
two things that have characterized American society throughout its 
history--to our health care environment by using choice and 
competition, by creating a public option for American citizens to 
participate in that will compete with private insurance companies. We 
can make private insurance companies better, and we can make health 
insurance more affordable for every American.
  This is our goal. This is what we know that H.R. 3200 will do, and we 
look forward, over the next month, in taking this argument to the 
American people, because the case we have is a winning case. The hand 
we have is a winning hand, and we know that the American people will 
embrace what we are attempting to do.

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