Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, the most pressing crisis we face in health care today is the number of Americans who lack basic health insurance benefits. It is a problem that can be illustrated by just a few numbers, so let us look at the facts. The number of uninsured Americans today stands at 43.6 million. This problem is not going to go away, and I think we have a responsibility to confront it. With health care costs continuing to rise sharply across the country, more and more employers and workers are sharing the burden of increased health care premiums. Employer-based health insurance premiums jumped by 15 percent on average in 2003, the largest increase in a decade; and, for many small employers, those increases were far larger. The second number is 60, which represents the percentage of these uninsured working Americans who either work for a small business or are dependent upon someone who does. Many of these Americans work for small employers who cannot afford to purchase quality health insurance benefits for their workers. Notably, the Census Bureau statistics show that employer-sponsored health coverage has declined because small businesses with less than 25 workers have been forced to drop coverage because of the rising cost of health insurance.”