I believe the Medical Bankruptcy Fairness Act, introduced by Chairman Whitehouse, would help families like mine recover from medically-based financial hardship.

The Medical Bankruptcy Fairness Act would give medical debtors across the country a fighting chance to save their homes.

It is a terrific and unjustified government intrusion, I believe, at the behest of the credit card industry.

Families who think they are protected may be only one accident, one injury or one diagnosis away from family bankruptcy.

It would waive the means test and credit counseling requirements, which are unnecessary, time-consuming, costly, even humiliating for debtors forced to file by medical misfortune.

As we in Congress continue working on broad legislation to reform our broken health care system and ensure accessible, affordable health insurance for all Americans, we take advantage of this hearing today to examine a particularly cruel…

The Medical Bankruptcy Fairness Act would change that.

But you have no choice. You still have to----

There is nobody you could go to and say, 'Listen, you do not understand.'

I look at the credit card industry as having been behind the bankruptcy reform and that its primary purpose was to keep people harassed longer before they could get into bankruptcy.

Just sort of a basic element of plain old fair play, isn't it?

94 percent of metropolitan areas have a health insurance market that is highly concentrated.

In 39 States, two health insurers control at least half of the market.

In nine States, a single insurer controls at least 75 percent of the market.

But as we have seen during this crisis, many of those, if not most of those, AAA-rated securities have, in fact, been downgraded.

And what is the breakdown between the mortgage-backed securities and----

I understand also that they were given credit by the regulators for their affordable housing goals with the purchase of much of these market private label securities.

Careful consideration should be given to the desirability of fixed rate mortgages and the mechanisms for maintaining that market.