Frank Pallone: “I just wanted to draw attention today to an article that was on the front page of the New York Times that found through…”

“I just wanted to draw attention today to an article that was on the front page of the New York Times that found through a recent survey that the number of uninsured in New York City is dramatically on the rise. I am talking about the national crisis of health insurance and the fact that increasingly more and more Americans have no health insurance. This of course was in New York City, but it has implications nationwide. Interestingly enough, the biggest problem is with children, children that have no health insurance. We know that the President has put forward a proposal to expand health insurance options for children so that more and more children are insured, and I think that this report, which I will call more attention to in the next few weeks, really explains why that is important. It says right here that most uninsured families in the city make between $15,000 and $45,000 a year. These are working people. And the report found the number of children without insurance has gone up twice as fast as the number of adults. This was a report that was put out by the New York City public advocate Mark Green, and in his report it also finds that the proportion of children who have no health insurance rose to almost 20 percent in 1995, up from 14 percent in 1990.”