On the recordJanuary 6, 2011
I am so pleased to be here again. I have been here in the House on this floor for the last hour and a half because I feel passionately, as we all do, about health care. There is not one among us, either personally, as the gentleman from Colorado has expressed, or one of our constituents, who doesn't have a health care story to share. So I thought that I would actually share with you a story today, Mr. Speaker, from a constituent of mine who lives in the Fourth Congressional District in Maryland. She writes to me that her daughter graduated from college in 2008 and lost coverage under my--this is from her--my health insurance. She got a job in August 2008 that provided her with health insurance coverage. When she lost that job in June 2009, as millions of Americans have lost their jobs, she was eligible for COBRA, the continuation of her health care. Mr. Speaker, she writes that the COBRA subsidy made it possible for her to continue with that insurance. But then when that subsidy ended in September of 2010, they had to make a family decision, she says, to continue to pay for her COBRA coverage until the end of 2010 when it expired. It was an affordability question. She continues on: We knew she would become eligible for my insurance at the start of the plan year in January 2011. And why is that? Because under the Affordable Care Act, she would be able to cover her daughter for her health insurance and would no longer have to COBRA that care.
