Shelley Berkley: “I rise in strong opposition to this legislative stunt to repeal health care reform, and I'm going to tell you why. There…”

“I rise in strong opposition to this legislative stunt to repeal health care reform, and I'm going to tell you why. There are 600,000 of my fellow Nevadans who have no health insurance. This doesn't mean that they don't get sick. It means that they wait until they're very sick and then they go to the emergency rooms to get care. Every hospital in southern Nevada is operating in the red. Why is that? Because the cost of providing health care to the uninsured in emergency rooms is astronomical. But there's more. If we repeal this bill, we will be eliminating the preexisting condition ban. If you have a preexisting condition, which at least 129,000 people in my congressional district have, you will not be able to get any insurance at all. If we repeal this bill, all of those 20-somethings who are living at home and because of the economy they can't find a job, they're not going to be able to stay on their parents' health care plan. That's 26,000 people in my congressional district, including my two children. The health care reform bill eliminates lifetime caps. Ask Jazelle Scott, age 8, or Michael Braun, age 5. They both have juvenile diabetes and they both have already exceeded their lifetime caps. Better yet, why don't you ask their mothers how they're going to be able to afford the lifesaving medication for their children if this bill is repealed.”