Political Quotes

“Thank you very much. And I want to thank you, Dr. Christensen, for your hard work and dedication. The Congressional Black Caucus is fortunate to have a leader in health care who is a physician and knows health care and, particularly, a physician with an expertise in public health. So we're very fortunate, and I want to thank you for bringing us together. You've worked long and hard on health issues, and particularly those issues in which there are health disparities, where African Americans suffer disproportionately in some diseases and knowing what we can do about it. Mr. Speaker, America has been debating health care for 100 years, and we've come to some agreements. We know, for example, and I think there's general agreement within this House, that the status quo is unsustainable; 14,000 Americans losing their health insurance every day. The costs are going up. Twenty years ago, the average American family spent about 7 percent of the family income on health care and now it's 17 percent, and it's going and continuing in that direction. Millions have no insurance at all, particularly those with preexisting conditions who are unable to get any insurance. So we know that one thing that, if we're going to deal with the problem, one thing that we have recognized is that any solution that's going to be meaningful has to be comprehensive. You cannot solve the problem of preexisting conditions, those with preexisting conditions not getting insurance unless everybody has insurance.…”