[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 22971]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          THE TIME FOR COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH CARE REFORM IS NOW

  (Mr. BRALEY of Iowa asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, the time for comprehensive health 
care reform is now. This picture says it all from the American Heart 
Association and the American Stroke Association. It shows a young boy 
in a doctor's waiting room. It says he's not a Democrat or a 
Republican; he's a patient.
  We need to talk about the human face of health care reform like my 
nephew's son, Tucker Wright, who was 18 months when he was diagnosed 
with liver cancer. Both of his parents work. They have health 
insurance. But the enormous cost of the lifetime of health care that 
Tucker faces is not even close to being covered by his parents' 
insurance policy. When we have lifetime caps on medical policies and we 
have an inability to have portability from one job to another, we are 
not addressing the medical needs of America.
  This Monday I met with a young woman, whose name is Hanna Rodriguez, 
who has a cleft palate, a birth defect. She's ready for the final 
surgery to repair that birth defect, but it's not covered by insurance, 
unlike other birth defects such as cystic fibrosis, because it's 
considered cosmetic surgery.
  We are not doing the job for the American people when we have these 
obstacles, and that's why we need health care reform now.

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