[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 20]
[House]
[Page 27124]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  (Mr. HIGGINS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. HIGGINS. Mr. Speaker, today in America we spend $2.5 trillion or 
17 percent of our economy as measured by the gross domestic product on 
health care. Yet we are 37th in terms of quality out of 192 countries. 
We are 41st in infant mortality out of 192 countries. We are dead last 
among industrialized countries in preventible deaths.
  Health care premiums have doubled in the past 10 years. They will 
double again in the next 10 years. Fourteen thousand people lose their 
coverage every day. They are not older people, because they qualify for 
Medicare. They are not poor people, because they qualify for Medicaid. 
It is individuals who get up every day and go to work, but, because of 
the skyrocketing cost of health care, their employers are forced to cut 
coverage and, in some cases, close altogether.
  This is a uniquely American problem with a uniquely American 
solution. We should support health care reform now.

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