Political Quotes

“I believe in enforcing our Nation's antitrust laws. And this bill has been improved since Judiciary Committee consideration. However, this legislation is still flawed, and in my opinion is meant to distract attention away from the fact that the majority is not working on the real issues the American people want us to address. Americans want policies that will reduce premiums and increase the quality of health care services in the U.S. Unfortunately, it is questionable whether this bill will accomplish these goals. I am also very disappointed in the rule for this bill, which was closed from the beginning, and blocks well-intentioned amendments offered by Republicans to make the bill better. Specifically, an amendment was offered by Representative Dan Lungren, a fellow member of the Judiciary Committee, to allow small health insurance companies to continue to be able to share historic loss data so that they can compete with big insurance companies. Under the text of the current bill, this type of sharing would be illegal, which would hinder new and smaller companies from entering the market, competing with the big guys, and offering lower premiums. The shocking thing is that this amendment was actually adopted in the Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan basis. The provision was then stripped by the majority in this new bill.”