[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 26054]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1030
                 OLDER AMERICANS LACK HEALTH INSURANCE

  (Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it has been 133 days since the 
Republicans promised to present their health insurance reform 
legislation, and we still have no alternative plan from them.
  The fastest growth group of uninsured Americans is older Americans 
age 50 to 64. Saying ``no'' to health insurance reform hurts millions 
of Americans who lack health insurance.
  There was a 36 percent increase in the number of older Americans 
without insurance from 2000 to 2009. It used to be if you worked most 
of your life here in America you could retire to someplace warm and 
sunny like my home State of Florida. There were 7.1 million uninsured 
people age 50 to 64 in 2007. How can we allow more than 7 million 
Americans over 50--many who have worked their entire life--to go 
without health insurance? They certainly can't afford to retire when 
they're worried about how to pay for their medical bills.
  Republicans point to a bunch of different solutions offered by their 
Members, including dismantling or privatizing Medicare. So which plan 
do they stand behind? Americans deserve to know.

                          ____________________