The Time Is Now To Enact A Health Care Plan For All Americans

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke of the fierce urgency of now. He talked about the fact that you cannot set a deadline or timeline on somebody else's freedom. Well, there's another civil rights movement going on today in America, and that is the right for health care.

Health care is what we need now, and we cannot delay. I urge my colleagues to come together and pass a health care reform bill before we go out for the August recess because people absolutely need it, people who are fearing being dropped or put off for preexisting conditions, people being subject to discrimination because of their age or their gender.

We've got to stop this. We have got to make sure that a caring Nation cares for the health of its people. The time is now. We cannot delay. We've had enough time, Madam Speaker.

Six decades America has debated about what to fix about our broken health care system. We've done 45 hours of markups, 79 House hearings, 215 pages of bills and work to make sure that we have every input and every point of view shared.

The time is now, Madam Speaker.

END TRANSCRIPT

Source