George Miller: “like so many of my other colleagues, I am deeply distressed that we continue to live in a country as wealthy as the…”

“like so many of my other colleagues, I am deeply distressed that we continue to live in a country as wealthy as the United States of America and we continue to have 10 million of our children without health coverage, 1 in 7 children in this Nation with no health insurance. Tragically, 9 out of 10 of these children live in families with working parents, but they earn too little to provide health insurance, not only for themselves but in many instances for their children. There was a time 10 years ago when children were covered by employers, when children were the responsibility of families working. But today as we see a downsizing of jobs, a downsizing of benefits, a downsizing of hours, employers are walking away from families in terms of health insurance, and they are certainly walking away from the children in those families that need health insurance. Since we debated health insurance issues, a million more children in this country are without that health insurance. Mr. Speaker, we did not solve the health insurance crisis in this country by failing to deal with it. We owe the children of America a much better due.”