Political Quotes

“Mr. President, tomorrow the President of the United States will address the Nation on the 90-day anniversary of the passage of health care reform, so I have come to the floor at this time to discuss an omission from the health care bill, and that omission is the protection of consumers from unfair medical insurance premium rate increases, which, as I will show in the next 15 minutes, are now taking place virtually all over this Nation. On March 4, I introduced legislation to provide the Secretary of Health and Human Services with the ability to set up a rate review procedure to provide that insurance premium rate increases are reasonable. Senators Boxer, Burris, Casey, Gillibrand, Lautenberg, Mikulski, Reed, Sanders, and Whitehouse have all cosponsored this bill. I originally proposed the amendment during the health care reform debate. We worked with the Administration in putting it together. We worked with the Finance Committee. We worked with Representative Schakowsky in the House, who has introduced the same legislation. President Obama decided to include it in his health care reform proposal, but unfortunately it did not meet the criteria for reconciliation and therefore had to be dropped. On March 4, I introduced a bill to provide this rate review, and on April 20 Senator Harkin was good enough to hold a full hearing in the HELP Committee. The time has come to take action.…”