On the recordJanuary 18, 2011
I think it is important to address the notion of job killing versus job creating. We've heard a lot of talk about the title of this bill and the jobs that it supposedly kills. But let's look at the facts here though. Of the 1.1 million private-sector jobs--documented--that were created last year, fully 200,000 of those were in the health care sector, or one-fifth. We've actually had an average of 20,000 jobs per month created in the health care sector alone over the course of the last 2 years. There have been no job losses in the health care sector. None. And I challenge our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, on the Republican side of the aisle, who are vociferously advocating the repeal of health care reform on the premise that it is a job killer to name one area of health care, one, where there have been job losses. I would suspect that we would hear crickets chirping, because there are none. There isn't a single area of health care that there have been job losses; not before health care reform passed and not since. Also, I think it is important to address the comments from my colleague the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) who stated that President Obama told the Democratic Caucus that health care reform would supposedly allow us to shrink five tests performed on a patient to one. That is simply not true. That never happened. He never said that.
