[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 22398-22399]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  PROMOTING GENUINE HEALTH CARE REFORM

  (Mr. YARMUTH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, our Republican colleagues would have you 
believe that there is a considerable amount of agreement between the 
two sides on how we should best enact health care reform. Well, I think 
the reality is we have substantial agreement on what the problems are, 
but very different opinions about how we go about approaching them.
  As my colleague Mr. Pascrell said, last week or 2 weeks ago they were 
waving this bill, one of many, H.R. 3400, at the President when he 
spoke here. They might as well have been waving the insurance 
companies' financial reports because this bill just provides another 
government subsidy to the insurance companies, which have put us in the 
big hole that we're in right now. Furthermore, they don't even pay for 
it.
  We are interested in genuine health care reform that's going to 
provide security and stability for every American citizen and that will 
help fix Medicare so that it provides continuing great service to our 
seniors.
  The Republican proposals don't do anything like that. We wish they 
would

[[Page 22399]]

join us in a sincere effort to promote effective health care reform. We 
haven't seen that effort yet.

                          ____________________