The Repeal of Health Care

Floor Speech

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If I can just point out something, a lot of people look at this through the lens of their personal experience. Perhaps people watching this say, You know what, I have health insurance, I like my health insurance and I don't have a preexisting condition. Why should I really care about those who do?

Well, I think you understand this, but I think many of our Republican colleagues don't. We wind up paying as citizens one way or the other. You know, we had awhile ago this H1N1 flu outbreak. Now, if someone has a choice and health insurance coverage that allows them to get a regular checkup and get doctor's screenings and get medications and given an idea what they should do to treat that, is it better or worse if they don't have insurance and they get on the bus in the morning and they wind up in a hospital emergency room and take you and your kids with them?

The fact is it is not whether we are going to pay for health care; it is how we do it most efficiently. My Republican colleagues don't seem to understand this very

basic idea that they talk about we should have choice. Nobody chooses to be born with cystic fibrosis. No one chooses to have a child that is born with asthma.

I don't care how much you believe in the free market, when God strikes you with those afflictions and you need care, the only question then becomes how do we provide the care that is most efficient. Right now if people don't have insurance and they fall down or they get hit by a bus, God forbid, and they don't have the ability to pay, it is not as if there is some magical force out there that absorbs those costs.

We wind up paying it. Everyone who has a health insurance policy winds up paying it. We in New York, and Congresswoman Clarke made the point about New York, we pay $8 billion in additional taxes. So it is just a matter of how we do it, and it comes down to a very simple idea: it is less expensive to give people a subsidy so they can buy insurance than it is to pay for them in emergency rooms. It is cheaper that way.

So it is just a matter of how we choose to do it, and I think when you point out the fairness and the decency as Americans that we have when we provide the care, it is also doing a favor for everyone who has insurance, and every taxpayer in this country.

So even if you don't buy into the idea that we should be altruistic, and we fundamentally believe, and I believe this is a fundamental difference between the parties, we don't believe you can get too far ahead as a country when you have so many, 30-some-odd million people without health insurance. We don't believe you fundamentally can. There are more people taking time off from work. Every single product we buy has more cost because of our health care failures. That is the difference between Republicans and Democrats. We believe those things out of a sense of compassion.

But even if you just look at the economic bottom line, you should want to provide people with preventive care. It makes the most sense. It saves us money. It saves every American who has insurance money, and I want to thank you for pointing those things out.

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