For those who can afford it, they have some of the best health care in the world. But Americans, overall, by any objective measure of performance, like life expectancy, or how soon babies die, we don't perform very well. And increasingly, the pressure on small business to deal with the failing system, what's happening on families who are having more and more insurance bureaucrats trying to prevent them from getting coverage, is a prescription for disaster. That's why this year there will be more than 1,000 people that I represent who will go bankrupt from medical costs, and most of them have insurance. Madam Speaker, that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. And if we're able to move forward with this health care reform, it will no longer happen in the United States.
On the recordMarch 18, 2010
Editor's note · Context
Blumenauer addresses the failures of the U.S. health care system and the need for reform.
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