Rob Andrews: “Mr. Speaker, there are two sets of ideas before the House tonight. There is a set of ideas on which there is…”

“Mr. Speaker, there are two sets of ideas before the House tonight. There is a set of ideas on which there is disagreement, whether we should limit the amount people can recover if they are a victim of malpractice; whether or not people should have medical savings accounts; whether or not there should be pooling arrangements for small businesses. There is legitimate disagreement about those things. Then there is another set of ideas on which there is virtual unanimous agreement, broad consensus that we should make it illegal to say you cannot deny someone an insurance policy because they have been sick, and that people should be able to take their insurance from job to job. Mr. Speaker, logical people would say that we put aside the things on which we cannot agree and debate about them and try to refine them and deal with them another day and then we take the things on which we do agree and pass them so we can send them to the President of the United States and make them law. But we are not going to do that.”