Greg Ganske: “I welcome back all my colleagues from across the country, both sides of the aisle. Congress has a lot of work to do in…”

“I welcome back all my colleagues from across the country, both sides of the aisle. Congress has a lot of work to do in the last couple months of this year. Part of that work that many of us would like to see completed, at least in the House, and get to conference would be to pass a bill here in the House on patient protection legislation. Now it is now September, Mr. Speaker, and the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) had told us that in June that we would see a patient protection bill on the floor before the August recess. In fact, he personally told me that it is his, quote, intent to have managed care reform legislation on the floor in July before our August recess. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, it did not happen, so we went off to our August recesses, talked to our constituents, and the managed care industry continued their $100 million advertising campaign against this legislation. Now there are only 435 Members of this House, Mr. Speaker. If you divide that into a hundred million, that is an awful lot of money that a special interest group is using to try to defeat a common-sense piece of legislation. But the August recess gave them their chance to go on TV, go on the radio, initiate phone calls into offices, and do my colleagues know what? I welcome that.…”