Let me comment on this gender discrimination. I think the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, put it really well today--some of the women had a meeting with her--when she said, being a woman is a preexisting condition.

That is a better Republican program, because that's if we do nothing, that's what would happen. But actually, the proposal that was laid out by Representative Paul Ryan, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, he laid out what he…

So let's say you're 54. Let's pretend. Are you? Okay. I believed you. I thought you were 54. Okay. So let's pretend you're 54 years old.

And what it means is, when you would get to 65 years old, rather than getting Medicare, you would get a voucher and be told, Go out and buy insurance. There is no more guaranteed Medicare for you. There is no more guaranteed package of…

That's right. And let me say I think truly this is one of the dividing lines between the Democratic majority that's about to pass this bill that stands with the American people versus the Republicans who persistently have stood on the side…

Ninety-four percent rate increases in the last 2 years. Something clearly needs to be done to get them under control. This bill does that. It says that they will have to justify, they'll have to open their books, they'll have to explain…

First of all, it's no wonder that the insurance industry is fighting us tooth and nail and with millions upon millions of dollars in TV advertising because they are making so much money and they do that by raising their rates. And it's…

I wanted to point out that our colleague, Representative Carolyn Maloney from New York, is head of the Joint Economic Committee, which just did a study, too, on the effects of health care, the current health care problems that women face…

Thank you. And that is so important to every woman in America, that we will finally be on a par, which under current circumstances isn't good enough, because the insurance companies--why is it that adding 30 million more people isn't good…

And the truth of it is that pregnancy, in some cases, is considered a preexisting condition. A C-section, a cesarean section, being a victim of domestic violence is a preexisting condition that could make you ineligible. If you go out on…

Those are the tragic stories that result from our health care system. But there are also enormous lost opportunities. One of the things that we know about our health care system is people get locked in jobs. They may dream about creating…

And the other was that she had misstated her weight-- understated her weight. Now I make a little joke, like what woman hasn't? You know, you have an accident, and people look at the driver's license and say, Who is this woman? She is not…

Where people in the first few months of the year have great expenses on health care and suddenly they find that they're not going to be able to be insured any more. That's it. So we do a lot of things immediately. I will get back to some…

Thank you so much, Representative Matsui, for being such a strong advocate for older Americans, really for all Americans, that are going to be helped by this legislation. And we are going to be talking much more about that. I wanted to…

Great. I thank you so much. I wanted to talk in very specific terms. Again, you talked a little bit about some of the issues, how this bill actually, in a concrete way, on a day-to-day basis, is going to help older Americans. I think it's…

Thank you very much for reminding everybody, first of all, that Medicare is the government program of health care for older Americans. It is not just a made-up story that sometimes people come up to us and say, Keep government hands off my…

I have to say that it is not necessarily just a little bit. At the beginning of September, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice announced the largest health care fraud settlement in history. Pfizer, the…

I think it's really important at this point to just mention some of the things that do happen as soon as the bill passes. A lot of people, one of the things that the Republicans have been saying about this legislation is that, Well, you…