[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 16]
[House]
[Pages 21220-21221]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  (Ms. SPEIER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Speaker, ever since President Truman proposed a 
system to keep Americans from going bankrupt due to medical bills, the 
for-profit insurance industry has painted any effort at reform as un-
American. I want to talk today about health and wealth.
  Unlike then, there is now broad consensus that our system is 
unsustainable. Premiums are rising at three times the rate of 
inflation, 4,000 Americans are losing their coverage every day, and 
more and more are unable to get insurance simply because they have 
preexisting conditions. Still, those who profit most by the status quo, 
the for-profit insurers, continue to lie to the American people while 
they take home between $70,000 a day and $300,000 a day.
  Let me be clear: no one in Congress is trying to nationalize medical 
care. On

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the contrary, providing Americans a basic low-cost public option simply 
expands access so that consumers can visit the doctors of their choice.
  It's time we start caring less about making private insurance 
companies and their CEOs wealthy and get back to making Americans 
healthy.

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