Political Quotes

“quite often on these Thursday mornings, or on other days, I have come to the Senate floor, and often with the Senator from South Dakota, who is giving such good leadership in this fight for guaranteed health insurance, private health insurance for all Americans--we have come to the floor to speak about what is happening to people in our States under our current health care system. Many of our colleagues have done this in a series we have called Faces of the Health Care Crisis, the human faces that go with the figures, the statistics, and the problems that have been presented to us. Little did we expect that talking about a crisis would become controversial here in Washington. The crisis concept is not so difficult for Pennsylvanians that I have spoken with over the past 2 years: People who have come to hearings and roundtables all over Pennsylvania; people whose stories I have tried to tell from this spot; people who are feeling in their lives the crisis we are talking about; people who have seen their coverage cut off when they lose a job, when they change a job, when they retire from a job, and--most absurdly-- welfare recipients who lose their coverage when they get a job; small business owners who have seen their premiums skyrocket 20 or even 30 percent a year when they or one of their employees, or their children, get a serious illness; older citizens who had to spend down--what a word that is--spend down their life savings in order to pay for nursing home…”