Tim Ryan: “If you can get in. For many of the kids, you sit there and wait for hours and hours and hours, if you can even get in…”

“If you can get in. For many of the kids, you sit there and wait for hours and hours and hours, if you can even get in; and the cost, and this is the point that we are trying to make, we are trying to save the taxpayers money. There is a reimbursement that goes back to these emergency rooms when they cover charity care when people go in without health insurance. Mr. Speaker, now, many of us can go, and you talk to the CEO who runs a hospital, and I have one in mind in my district that I talk to all the time, where he tells me at every meeting we are at, whether we are talking about giving money to build another hospital or expand their facilities, or anything else, he always brings this up. I would rather give these kids a prescription for $20 or $30 than to see them two or three weeks later come into the emergency room with pneumonia, and it costs $20,000 or $30,000. This is what this bill does. This saves us money, not to mention the fact that the kid will miss school, the kid will go to school and get other kids sick. But to have a President of the United States in 2007 lack the sensitivity of what these families go through who do not have health care, to say, well, you can go to the emergency room. Mr. Speaker, the President doesn't have to go to the emergency room when he goes to a fancy Navy hospital. Many of us, we don't have to go to the emergency room. Many families who have health insurance, they don't have to go.”