Frank Pallone: “next week I plan to introduce the Affordable Health Insurance Act of 1998. This is the House companion bill to Senator…”

“next week I plan to introduce the Affordable Health Insurance Act of 1998. This is the House companion bill to Senator Kennedy's legislation that he will also shortly introduce. Mr. Speaker, in 1996, 2 years ago, Senators Kennedy and Kassebaum introduced the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which became known as the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill. The Kennedy-Kassebaum bill sought to improve portability and continuity of health insurance coverage and to limit preexisting conditions exclusions. This was part of our overall effort to reform health care and health insurance and try to make it easier for people to transfer their health insurance when they moved from job to job and to make sure that people who had preexisting conditions were not excluded from being able to obtain health insurance because they lost their job or changed their job or decided that they needed health insurance. At the time, 2 years ago, as cochair of our Democratic Health Care Task Force, I worked with a majority of Democrats and some moderate Republicans to push for passage of the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill. On August 21, 1996, it was signed into law by President Clinton as Public Law 104-191. Those of us who pushed for the Kennedy-Kassebaum legislation were hopeful that what we set out to do would be accomplished in the 2 years since it was enacted into law. However, the General Accounting Office recently issued a report.…”