Jay Rockefeller: “I rise to comment on the bill Senator Kennedy and others have worked on which is formally called the Medicaid/CHIP…”

“I rise to comment on the bill Senator Kennedy and others have worked on which is formally called the Medicaid/CHIP Family Improvement Act, but I will simply refer to it as the Family Care Act. Most of the people in this country who are uninsured work. A lot of Americans assume that if somebody does not have health insurance, there is lack of merit or effort on their part. Most of the people who do not have health insurance are, in fact, working every single day. They are working, and many happen to be the working poor. The whole philosophy of the earned-income tax credit, which President Reagan started and a lot of people continued, is that if people are poor and are working, we say: Good, you have taken a job; as a result of taking a job, you have given up your Medicaid health care benefits, and in America we respect that you are taking a risk by going out into the marketplace. You are probably not getting health insurance because of the low wages you are being paid but, nevertheless, you value work and you are going ahead with it. This is the same spirit we are talking about in the Family Care Act. We value people who work. We value people who work for low wages, and we want to help them and their families.”