Sam Gejdenson: “the President and the people of this country have forced this do-nothing Congress to take some actions, and we have…”

“the President and the people of this country have forced this do-nothing Congress to take some actions, and we have begun a process of dealing with issues they have avoided for 2 years. But there are two critical issues that still are not addressed. One is fixing the pensions of people in our Armed Services to make sure that they get a decent retirement so we can keep quality people in the Armed Services. The second affects almost every American, and that is HMO reform. Mr. Speaker, seniors are losing their HMOs as they hop from city to city trying to get only healthy seniors. Every citizen who has to deal with their doctor or hospital is frightened that their HMO will not pay the bill or will not allow them to get service. Hospitals and doctors and patients are being run by people who have never seen the patient and never seen the inside of a medical facility. These people are in danger physically. This Republican Congress has to address these two issues. There are others, but certainly the life and death of our constituents, the viability of our hospitals, is something we ought not to be able to ignore.”