Rich Neal: “I thank Secretary Shalala for yielding. Madam Speaker, I feel like I have a preexisting condition. It is arguing about…”

“I thank Secretary Shalala for yielding. Madam Speaker, I feel like I have a preexisting condition. It is arguing about the Affordable Care Act. For 10 years we have argued about the Affordable Care Act. A campaign is part of forming a government, and no issue resonated with the American people in the last election like the issue of preexisting conditions. My friend, the gentleman from California, previously said he didn't understand why people had to buy something that they didn't want. Well, we require people to buy automobile insurance. And, by the way, you don't buy automobile insurance the day after you have been in an automobile accident. And we probably don't want to buy homeowners insurance, but, guess what; we don't buy it the day after our house is burned down. We buy it because the genius of insurance is the spreading of risk. So I ask the following rhetorical question, and that is, why should the rest of us annually put $1,000 into our premiums for health insurance to take care of those who don't want to buy health insurance? So what this discussion and argument is really about, for the moment, is the following: The child who is born with diabetes is then told, under the old system, that they can never buy health insurance, or, if they do, it has to be rated--back to the old actuarial argument about how do we spread risk.…”