John Yarmuth: “Over the course of the last year and a half as we worked to pass incredibly important protections to Americans…”

“Over the course of the last year and a half as we worked to pass incredibly important protections to Americans, opponents of health care reform continued to try to scare people about what we were doing. And now with this vote today, where the Republican plan is basically to remove all of those protections that we have offered the American public, there are a lot of people out there who will think that after the vote today that these protections are going to go away. So I want to assure the constituents in my district, the Third District of Kentucky--almost 300,000 of them with preexisting conditions--your protection against discrimination will not go away. Those 15,700 small businesses in my district that will now get benefits to provide coverage for their employees, don't worry about that vote. Those protections are not going to go away. For those seniors in the doughnut hole, almost 10,000 in my district who have had their prescription drug costs lowered because of what we did last year, this vote today will not take them away. And as for those 24,000 individuals in my district who will now have access to insurance for the first time, the vote today will not take them away.”