[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 25385-25386]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate sharing the floor with the 
senior Senator from Minnesota, Ms. Klobuchar.
  I come to the floor regularly and share letters from voters and 
constituents and citizens around my State, around Ohio, people from 
Kent and Warren and Mansfield and Zanesville and Chillicothe. We all 
get these letters. I know the Acting President pro tempore gets them 
from Arkansas and Senator Klobuchar gets them from Minnesota--letters 
from people who generally, 2 years ago, a year ago, if you asked them, 
they would have said they were satisfied with their insurance, but then 
something happened: They had a child born with an illness and the 
insurance company cut them off because the child had a preexisting 
condition or someone got very sick, they thought they had good 
insurance, but the insurance company canceled them because the cost was 
so high for their illness. A lot of these letters also come from people 
who lost their job. They are 59, 60, 61 years old, and they pray to God 
they will be able to get through the next 3, 4, 5 years until they are 
Medicare eligible so they will have a strong government health care 
plan--Medicare--to insure them the rest of their lives, so they can get 
the kind of health care they, as American citizens, should be entitled 
to.
  So let me share three or four letters, and then I will turn the floor 
over to Senator Klobuchar.
  Allison from Hamilton County, in southwest Ohio, the Cincinnati area, 
writes:

       In June, I was taken to the hospital for suspected Ruptured 
     appendix. I was admitted and stayed for 24 hours. Currently, 
     my hospital expenses are at $9000. Each day it seems like 
     another bill comes to my home.
       Last year, I had a part time job while going to school 
     full-time and earned $7000. I completed my coursework and 
     began looking for full time work last month in this tough 
     economy.
       I believe that the health care program being discussed will 
     help families like mine.

  Allison is exactly right. Think about this. This woman was in 
college. She was working. She is doing everything we ask in this 
country. She was in college full time. She was working a part-time job. 
She was working hard. She lost her insurance. She does not have 
insurance because of her age. So what is going to happen to her? She is 
going to face a workplace that is not very embracing right now, with 
not a lot of opportunity, and have these kinds of costs already piling 
up--possibly student loans also.
  What our bill will do is simply say that anybody can stay in their 
parent's health plan up to the age of 26. That will make a difference 
for people such as Allison.
  Greg from Shelby County, in western Ohio, the Sidney area of the 
State, writes:

       Please keep up the fight for healthcare reform. We have a 
     23-year-old daughter who just graduated from college and has 
     been consistently denied health insurance because of a pre-
     existing condition.
       Her condition only requires maintenance medication but she 
     is evidently considered ``too much of a risk'' to insure.
       We know that if opponents of health reform had a loved one 
     being denied health insurance they [might] not be so against 
     it.
       Please, please keep fighting and make sure to adopt 
     legislation to get coverage for all Americans.

  Greg and his daughter are victims again of a system that is 
malfunctioning. Too many times, in too many cases, people who thought 
they had decent insurance--their daughter is 23. She cannot stay on her 
parent's plan because of that. Our bill will allow her to. Our bill 
will give his daughter the opportunity to go into the insurance 
exchange--to pick Aetna or Blue Cross or WellPoint or another insurance 
company or pick a public option--a public option--that will keep the 
insurance companies honest, that will compete with the insurance 
companies and help bring costs down.
  There are two more letters. I have a letter from Stephanie from 
Cincinnati. I will tell her story quickly.
  Stephanie traveled all the way from Ohio, along with six other 
families from around the country, to talk about their health care 
stories. They are speaking for millions of Americans who can't obtain 
health insurance or who have coverage but still can't get needed 
medical services. Stephanie's parents were in an accident that cost her 
mother her life and left her father in intensive care for 5 weeks. 
Stephanie had to battle insurance companies constantly to get her 
father vital treatments for his injuries so he could walk again.
  Stephanie's message is simple. She said: I and every other American 
are not simply claims to be denied.
  Think about that. Your mother is killed in a car accident. Your 
father is in intensive care. What are you doing? You are fighting with 
insurance companies to cover your father's medical care. What kind of 
system does that?
  Insurance companies don't want to insure you when you are sick. If 
you are going to be too expensive, they find reasons to deny you care: 
preexisting condition, discrimination based on disability or gender or 
age or geography. They don't want to cover you if you are sick, but if 
you get insurance, then they work to try to deny your claim.
  Thirty percent of claims in this country are denied in the first 
round--30 percent. Some of them get undenied. Some of them get accepted 
and paid. But the sick person or the sick person's family has to get on 
the phone day after day and fight with the insurance company and cajole 
and argue and call their State legislator and call their Congressman 
and push the insurance company to do the right thing. What does that 
do? If you are suffering from breast cancer and you have to deal with 
your illness and all those issues and you have to deal with an 
insurance company, what kind of health care system is that?
  The last letter I will read, and then turn the floor over to Senator 
Klobuchar, is from Dan from Butler County, just north of Cincinnati. 
Dan writes:

       I am 47 years old. My wife and I are among the working poor 
     in this country. We live in a very modest home with typical 
     household expenses: A car, a school loan, a few thousand 
     dollars of credit, and other bills. But starting in 2010, our 
     health care expenses will nearly equal our monthly mortgage 
     payments.
       I have been diabetic since age 4. Twenty years ago I got a 
     kidney transplant. But today, I can't pay for the increased 
     health premiums my insurance company charges me. I can't pay 
     the doctor bills and keep my house and my car at the same 
     time. It will eventually come down to not seeing a doctor or 
     not taking my medication in order to keep my house.
       Had I known before that getting a kidney transplant in 1988 
     would be a preexisting condition today, I would have declined 
     it and not put the financial burden on my parents, myself, 
     and my wife.

  So here is a gentleman in Middletown, Hamilton, in that area of Ohio. 
Dan works every day, working poor, making $10, $12 an hour, barely 
making it, working hard every day. He has to make a choice: house 
payment, medication, insurance payment. He can't do all three. Maybe he 
can't even do two of those. When somebody is working that hard and 
playing by the rules and doing what we ask of them in this country, 
which is to work hard, raise

[[Page 25386]]

your kids, go to school, contribute to your community, Dan doesn't have 
that opportunity because of what has happened to health care costs.
  Our bill will help people such as Dan. If he doesn't have insurance 
or he can't afford that insurance, he can go into an insurance 
exchange, choose a menu of plans: CIGNA or Aetna or WellPoint or he can 
choose the public option, which will mean no more preexisting 
condition, no more denial of care, no more limits if you get sick and 
it gets expensive. It will keep the insurance companies honest, allow 
them to compete, and bring the prices down. That is why the public 
option will make this health care bill even better than it would be 
otherwise. It is the least we can do. It is what we have to do for our 
Nation.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I think the Republican leader is here 
and he will go before me.

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