Political Quotes

“Madam President, our colleagues, Senator Warner and Senator Murray, have come to the floor over the course of the day to speak about the importance of protecting Americans who have preexisting health conditions, and I want to see if I can put this in a bit of context so that people understand why those of us on this side feel so strongly, why I think Senator Warner and Senator Murray were spot-on, and I want to put it in the context of the way I came up. When I got out of law school, I set up a legal aid program for senior citizens. I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers, and I saw what it meant when the big insurance companies could just clobber those people with preexisting health conditions. They would just throw all kinds of extra costs on them, heap extra expenses, and pretty much beat the stuffing out of anybody who had a preexisting health condition. We tried as hard as we could to push back. This was all before I was in public life. At the time, I said: If I ever have the opportunity in the Congress, I am going to make this priority business to make sure that everybody in America could go to bed at night knowing that they wouldn't be wiped out in the morning if they have a preexisting condition. So in the course of the whole debate about the Affordable Care Act, I produced a piece of legislation called the Healthy Americans Act. Seven Democrats and seven Republicans were cosponsors. Some of the Republican cosponsors are still serving in the U.S. Senate today.…”