Angie Craig: “I ask him to read my sense of the Senate. It has nothing to do with taxes at this moment. His underlying argument that…”

“I ask him to read my sense of the Senate. It has nothing to do with taxes at this moment. His underlying argument that the responsibility for MSAs, when you are making substantive changes in current law, is a finance responsibility and a tax provision, is correct. My amendment is not a tax provision. It is asking the Senate to speak to the importance of doing what the Senator from Montana has said he will do this year. That is what my amendment says--that medical savings accounts are important. Do they belong in a Patients' Bill of Rights? Absolutely they do. If you want to optimize the rights of a patient or of a potential patient in America's health care system, then you give them full access--not limited and restricted access to medical savings accounts. Let me correct one other thing that I think is important. As to this old bugaboo ``it is just for the rich'' that we heard coming from the chairman of the Finance Committee, will he tell me that one-third of the 100,000 people who are uninsured and have never had insurance before because they couldn't afford it are somehow ``closeted rich'' people? I doubt it very much.”