Political Quotes

“let me begin by thanking my colleagues who are here today, the Senator from Tennessee, the Senator from Louisiana, and the Senator from Connecticut, for the hard work they are doing to create new legislation that will improve the health care of Americans in the future, but I come today as well to speak about legislation which has already passed that was designed to improve the health care of veterans across the entire United States. I come to speak in favor and in support of the Emergency Care Fairness Act of 2009, which recently has come under attack by the VA and legislation introduced on this floor. In 2009, the 111th Congress passed the Emergency Care Fairness Act to fix a very big loophole in the law which hurt our Nation's veterans. Prior to 2009, the VA was not authorized to cover any costs of emergency room care at non-VA facilities for veterans who were covered by any type of third-party insurance. That meant that if a veteran had a limited insurance policy that covered even $1 of an emergency room bill, the VA would not pay a dime to cover costs that were not paid for by their insurance. Meanwhile, if a veteran had no insurance and was rushed to the emergency room, the VA was authorized to cover all of his or her costs. Clearly, this made no sense. Under the system, the VA penalized veterans for owning third-party insurance, particularly Medicare.…”