Al Franken

I think it's actually on the face, evident, that there is controversy, isn't there?

But to put in your testimony that it's noncontroversial agreement is not accurate.

I have four words for Senator Al Franken and that is, Joe Mauer for Governor.

I respectfully cannot agree that a mandate with no penalty in the first year and a maximum penalty of $750 is 'strong.'

I think there are tremendous benefits to health care reform that weren't mentioned when you were talking about what you kind of call the meager benefits.

My concern is that the Senate bill comes close to this situation because of the extremely weak enforcement of the individual mandate.

But with national health reform, we have the opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of millions of small business owners and their workers.

She said in her speech that what most inspired her about those books and about those American movies was the American dream.

But if you have a pre-existing condition-- one of the things that this health care reform would do, is say that an insurance company can't charge you more because you have pre-existing conditions.

We know that this Health Reform bill will invest unprecedented resources in small businesses so that they can affordably cover their workers.

And it seems to me that if--ok, so, that's valuable. That's really valuable.

I believe it is non-controversial that the combination of guaranteed issue and community rating would raise average premiums.

Why is that and why should I be OK with that?

I am very troubled to see that the problems that we had in 2002 seem to be persisting 7 years later, at the time of your audit.

What can we do as a body to prevent that kind of thing from happening? How can I give this guy an answer?

Therefore, we are recommending that the guarantee levels be increased.

Now whose job is it to change those laws? Oh, right, that would be us.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was struck by the problems that the GAO identified in the report and how closely they mirror those of the groups of steel workers and retirees that I have talked to on the Iron Range in Minnesota.

However, over time the level of benefits for those plans that do fail--and there are plans that have gone that way...

In the middle of a recession, we are asking them to put more money aside for the pensions, and that is money that cannot be used to create jobs or invest in things.

I was very impressed with the sort of return on investment.

Because people go to prison for having, you know, a bag of marijuana. These are people who are responsible for ripping off Medicare to the tune of a couple billion dollars, and they are not in prison.

It is a tremendous investment. It is a win-win, right?

It is fair to say that electronic records, electronic health records, really is an area... where we can really start increasing our efficiency in attacking fraud.