[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 22]
[Senate]
[Pages 29620-29621]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. REID. Madam President, I think everyone will acknowledge the 
legislatively historic time in which we are now involved. We have tried 
to get to this point with health care legislation for almost 70 years. 
We are there. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so that 
people in the future will not have to file bankruptcy because they get 
sick. That is what happens today. For example, 750,000 people filed 
bankruptcy last year, as I have said here on a number of occasions, and 
almost 70 percent of those who filed bankruptcy did so because of 
medical expenses. In addition, 62 percent of those who filed because of 
medical expenses had insurance. That pretty well says it all.
  There is not one of us who has gone home in recent months and hasn't 
had someone come to us in a grocery store or some other public event 
and say: My daughter has diabetes. She is now 23 years old. She goes 
off our insurance. What are we going to do? She can't get insurance.
  That is going to stop. There is nothing the people of America want 
more than for us to do something about this. They want us to stop 
greedy insurance companies from denying health care to the sick and 
taking away your coverage at the exact time you need it the most. They 
want us to make it illegal for multibillion-dollar companies to say: I 
am sorry, your high cholesterol is going to prevent us from giving you 
an insurance policy or you were in an accident and badly injured your 
leg a few years ago and we can't give you insurance now or you are too 
old or you have hay fever or you have asthma. We have all heard the 
stories. These insurance companies say: You are on your own. Why? 
Because they are concerned more about their bottom line than they are 
about taking care of the American people. I was here a couple days ago 
talking about an insurance company that made more than $1 billion in 
profits last year. Their chief executive officer made over $100 million 
in take-home pay. But they are still out denying coverage to everybody. 
These companies are not good for the American people.
  What we want to do is make sure that before people get sick, they get 
the tests they need before these diseases start. We want women to be 
able to afford screenings that will catch breast cancer.
  There was an interesting piece, sad though it was, on public radio 
this morning. African-American women get breast cancer at a much 
earlier age and it is a much more difficult type of breast cancer. That 
is why what Senator Mikulski did was so important. Women can now, no 
matter their age, have a mammogram to find out if they have breast 
cancer. They need these tests. We need to make sure women are able to 
get Pap smears when they need them and other things that are so 
important. Men need to be able to check for prostate cancer, which is 
something that has now become fixed on men's minds. It wasn't in the 
past.
  Seniors want to be able to afford prescription drugs. They want to 
know their Medicare benefits will be protected.
  The American people want us to make it possible for everyone to 
afford insurance. They know that until we do, those who do have it will 
keep paying extra to cover those who don't. They want us to cut the 
waste and fraud out of the health care system so that everyone can save 
money. They want us to make sure they can choose their own doctors, 
their own hospitals, and a health plan that is right for them.

[[Page 29621]]

They want us to guarantee they will be able to afford health care even 
if they lose or change jobs.
  That is why we have written a good bill, one that will make it 
possible for every single American to stay in a condition known as 
healthy. It is a bill that will make health care more affordable and 
health insurance companies more accountable, and it will do all this 
while reducing the deficit.
  Yet, while the American people want us to act, our Republican 
colleagues in the Senate want nothing more than failure. They wanted us 
to do nothing. That is why Republicans have sounded a familiar cry: 
Slow down. Stop everything. Start over.
  We have seen it again and again. They like to pretend America's 
health care crisis isn't a problem, that it can have some little minor 
tweaks here and there and everything will be fine. They choose to 
ignore the fact that unfair and unchecked insurance companies are 
forcing the very people these Senators represent to lose their homes, 
file for bankruptcy, and even die.
  It amazes me that the Republican leader rejects the suggestion that 
what we are doing is truly historic. In fact, the day before yesterday 
he said it is ``an act of total arrogance.'' That is a direct quote. I 
am confident history, ironically enough, will prove the Republican 
leader wrong. This is indeed historic, as I began my conversation 
today. I am not afraid to say it is. But instead of joining us on the 
right side of history, all Republicans can come up with is this: Slow 
down. Stop everything. Let's start over.
  If you think you have heard these same excuses before, you are right. 
When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there 
were those who dug in their heels and said: Slow down. It is too early. 
Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough.
  When women spoke up for the right to speak up, when they wanted the 
vote, some insisted they simply slow down. There will be a better day 
to do that. Today isn't quite right.
  When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to 
everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some Senators resorted 
to the same filibuster threats we hear today.
  And more recently, when Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut, one of 
the people who will go down in history as the chief champion of the 
bill before us, said that Americans should be able to take care of 
their families without fear of losing their jobs, we heard the same old 
excuses. Through 7 years of fighting and more than one Presidential 
veto, it was slow down, stop everything, start over.
  History is repeating itself before our eyes. There are now those who 
don't think it is the right time to reform health care. If not now, 
when? But in reality for many who feel that way, there will be never a 
good time to reform health care.
  I know this country has never had a place for those who hope for 
failure. So here is whom I would rather listen to: the men and women in 
Nevada who write me every day. They are hardworking people, lots of 
different letters, really sad letters, people who play by the rules and 
don't understand why their health insurance system doesn't do the same. 
They write from the heart. Here are a couple of stories I will talk 
about.
  A woman named Lisa lives in Gardnerville, NV, a beautiful place 
beneath the Sierra Nevada mountains, with her two daughters, both of 
whom are in elementary school. The youngest suffers seizures. Her 
teachers think she has a learning disability. Because of her family 
history, Lisa, the girl's mom, is at a high risk for cervical cancer. 
Although she is supposed to get an exam every 3 months, now she is not 
able to get one at all. When Lisa lost her job, she lost her health 
coverage. Now both she and her daughter miss out on the tests and 
preventative medicine that could keep them healthy. Her long letter to 
me ended with a simple plea. It wasn't slow down, stop everything, 
start over. It was:

       We want to go to the doctor.

  Another person named Braden lives in Sparks, NV. Sparks and Reno are 
side by side. Braden works a 55-hour week to support his family, but it 
just barely pays the bills. It is not enough for him to get health 
insurance. He had to go to the emergency room--$12,000. It was the only 
place he could go. He is a brave man, though, and in his letter he 
doesn't dread the debt he carries, and he is going to try to pay it. He 
doesn't grumble about how hard he works. But he does have one fear. It 
is not that the Senate is doing its job. His fear is, as he wrote:

       If I was seriously sick or injured, I would lose it all.

  That is the way many Americans feel.
  Michelle is a 60-year-old woman who lives in Fallon, NV, about 60 
miles southeast of Reno. Like so many in my State, she moved to Nevada 
in the last 10 years. Like so many Americans who keep our economy 
going, she is self-employed and has to find her own health insurance. 
She has two choices. One is a company that won't give her a policy 
because she takes three prescription medications. The insurance company 
only allows you to have two. So Michelle is stuck buying insurance from 
the other company, the only one that will sell her a plan. When 
Michelle moved to Nevada a few years ago, she picked the cheapest plan. 
Now, within 3 years, her plan costs three times as much. That doesn't 
include dental and vision insurance. It is very minimal, a bare-bones 
policy. She is waiting. But she is not waiting for us to scrap 
everything we have done over the past year and start over. She wrote 
that she is ``waiting to be old enough for Medicare to afford the 
surgery my doctor says I need, as I know with my current policy it will 
cost more than I can afford.''
  These are real stories about real people: Braden, Michelle, and Lisa. 
They are not written with a political objective in mind. I do not know 
whether they are Democrats or Republicans or Independents. They have no 
axe to grind, as far as any partisan view. They are written by people 
who know that insurance companies discriminate against their 
policyholders, and it is not based, I repeat, on party affiliation. 
They are written by citizens who know this crisis is bigger than 
politics, and too big to ignore. They are written by Americans who want 
to be able to live a healthy life without going broke.
  My colleagues on the other side want us to slow down, stop 
everything, and start over. But the course of our country goes in a 
different direction, only one direction. We move forward. We make 
progress. And when history calls on its leaders to make life better for 
its citizens, we answer, and we act. And we are going to act.

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