Harry Reid: “I tell my friend that I read the list of hundreds of companies today that, in the last few months, have laid off people.…”

“I tell my friend that I read the list of hundreds of companies today that, in the last few months, have laid off people. With rare exception, every one of those jobs is a job where they had health insurance. They are thrown off the rolls because COBRA--that means you can buy the insurance, but they don't have the money to do that. So what happens is they go to an emergency room, which is the highest cost of care in America. That is where they are forced to go. It is a scandal and an embarrassment that we don't do more to help solve the health insurance crisis we have in America. Wouldn't it be nice, I say to anybody within the sound of my voice, if we had a debate on the Senate floor about health insurance? Why do we have 44 million people with no health insurance? That number is going up. Every day, that number is going up. The first thousand days of the Bush administration should not be days he looks at proudly. One of the very important issues we have to deal with--I have not talked about it at all today--is, What are we going to do about prescription drugs?”