Health Care for the American People

HEALTH CARE FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE -- (House of Representatives - July 16, 2009)

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Ms. EDWARDS of Maryland. Thank you for yielding. Good evening, Mr. Ellison. It is good to be here with you this evening. And I just want to say a few words because I don't have a lot of time, and I know you're really holding the fort here talking about the importance of health care to all Americans, the importance of a public plan option that really covers all Americans, gives them a choice of their doctors and what do they want for their services.

I just want to say the U.S. health care system is really one of the most expensive systems in the world. We know that. We spend about $2.2 trillion each year on health care services and products. At the same time, 46 million Americans are uninsured, and a whole bunch of others, 80 percent who have insurance, are actually from working families. They have insurance, but it is not enough, and it is not the right kind of coverage, and premiums are going up, and deductibles are going up. And it has become really an unaffordable system for American families.

Almost half of all personal bankruptcies are attributed to medical debt. I had that experience myself. I almost went bankrupt because I had a huge health care bill. I couldn't pay it. I got very, very sick, and I needed a choice. Fortunately, I was able to pay that off and then end up getting good insurance. But the reality is that when that happens, it can almost cripple a family. I don't want any other family to have to face the kind of choices I did about whether to take care of myself and my son or to pay for health care coverage.

And, at the same time, we also know that sometimes people make the choices. Do I buy my medications? Do I go see my doctor when I'm sick, or do I wait till I'm really sick? Those are choices that are unacceptable.

And let's look at the practices of our insurers. I mean, you know what happens. An insurer will say to you something like, well, you know, you've been a victim of domestic violence, and so we're not going to cover that and the cost of that because it's a pre-existing illness. I bet a lot of people across the country don't know that there are health insurers that deny coverage because of a circumstance of domestic violence. It's hard to believe that, and yet it's true, because it's considered a pre-existing condition.

And so we need not just a public option, we need one that's robust. We need one that says to insurance companies, here are the dos and the don'ts. Let's take care of the American people, and let's give them some choices.

Eighty percent of Americans have health insurance, and so that means that most people that you run into in your schools, your communities, your neighborhoods, your workplaces have health insurance. But for so many people, it's completely inadequate to do the task.

I think again about another situation of an insurer where my son actually had a little bit of an accident. He went up, he came down on his head. He needed to have an MRI. We talked to the insurance company. And what did they say to us? You couldn't go to the 24-hour MRI center; you had to wait and get that coverage in an emergency room. And it turns out that the emergency room was more expensive than getting the same examination that was a critical examination ordered by a doctor in an MRI facility. And so these choices don't make sense for the American public.

And as I said, Mr. Ellison, you know, premiums are going up. Premiums have gone up 114 percent from 1999 to 2007. And that's greatly outpacing incomes in this country. And so the high costs, what are they doing? They're crippling the American middle class. They're crippling working families, they're crippling businesses.

Most of the small business people I know actually want to be able to provide health care coverage, good health care coverage for their employees. But I'll tell you, if you're trying to provide health care coverage and you're suffering the cost of $10,000 and $20,000 per employee for health care, you can't stay in business like that. And so we want to give small business, all business, a helping hand with making sure that they can provide affordable and low-cost coverage to their employees.

We want to make sure that people who are unemployed and maybe uninsured or underinsured have coverage. We want to make sure that there's a standard set of benefits that everyone should enjoy so you get the advantage of preventive care, diagnostic treatments ordered by your physician.

We want the patient and the doctor to have control of their coverage, not the patient and the insurer, not the doctor and the insurer, nobody in between, not the government or anybody else in between, but the doctor and the patient. And then we want to make sure that doctors are paid so that they can make a viable practice, so that they can engage in the kind of primary and preventive care that we think is most important to preserving and protecting our health and our quality of health over a long time.

And so I'm excited, actually, about where we are right now. I mean, I am so heartened because I think we've learned a lot over the years. And this time the American people aren't just going to get a promise, they are going to get the kind of health care they deserve. And so we should all be both excited and proud to prepare to cast a vote for the American people, for small businesses, for working families, for the uninsured, for the underinsured, for all Americans. It is the most that we can do for the American public.

And I'll have to tell you, I cannot wait to cast my vote for a public plan option that is robust, that covers all Americans, that ensures what I call the three C's. You know, we want lower costs, we want quality care, and we want continuity of care. It shouldn't matter whether you have this job or that job or another job. You keep your health care coverage. And when we cast that vote for the American people, they're going to stand with us because it's the right thing to do.

And so it's so good to be here this evening in this House, in the People's House, saying that at last, on health care, we are going to do what's right by the American people.

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