Political Quotes

“I would like to tell my colleagues a couple of stories. We are going to talk about what is happening in healthcare right now. There is the healthcare that is happening here in this room in the debate that is ongoing that started months ago, continuing to try to figure out the solutions to what we face with the Affordable Care Act. Then there are the healthcare issues happening at home. Sometimes we get caught up in this conversation and think this is what the center of the healthcare conversation is about. It is not. The center of the healthcare conversation in America is around dinner tables. Let me tell my colleagues what that conversation sounds like. This comes from one of my constituents who just wrote to me. He said: My premium increases from $1,308 per month to $2,489 per month. This is for just my wife and I. We are self-employed small business owners and simply cannot afford to pay nearly $30,000 per year for health insurance. We will have to pay the penalty for not having healthcare, but we have to eat and pay our bills. Sadly, we are both in our late 50s, and we probably need healthcare more now than ever. Mr. Lankford, this is not the America that I grew up in, the America my father fought to preserve in World War II. That is the healthcare debate happening in America right now-- individuals who used to be able to afford their healthcare coverage, but now they cannot and no longer have healthcare.…”