[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 22397]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  (Mr. OLVER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, economic recovery requires not only solving 
the employment and housing crises but the health care crisis as well.
  In this decade, the premiums charged by private health insurance 
companies have risen more than 75 percent while workers' wages have 
risen less than 25 percent. Meanwhile, the profits of the 10 largest 
health insurers have risen by 400 percent, and the salaries of their 
CEOs have tripled.
  America now has 50 percent higher health care costs than the highest 
of the next 20 most industrialized nations. Yet Americans suffer 
shorter life expectancies and higher infant mortalities than any of 
those nations. Fifty million American citizens who cannot afford basic 
health insurance receive crisis care in the most expensive way 
possible: in emergency rooms for which the rest of Americans pay. The 
uninsured fail to receive the preventative care they need, and the 
insured shoulder the enormous long-term costs in both lives and dollars 
of preventable diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
  There is something morally and fiscally wrong with this picture. Wake 
up, America. We need health care reform now.

                          ____________________