Rep. Doggett: This Isn't a Republican Prescription-- This is a Placebo
Full text of Rep. Doggett's remarks as delivered follow below:
"With last year's important health insurance reform law, we provided real guarantees to American families against insurance monopoly abuses. Today, Republicans tell these families, ‘Forget the binding guarantees, we have 12 platitudes for you.'
"This isn't a Republican prescription -- this is a placebo. And for the American middle class, it's a very bitter pill indeed.
"Yesterday, House Republicans, in a remarkable measure, with one vote decided to increase the national debt, reduce the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund, raise insurance premiums, and charge seniors more for their health care.
"During the last 12 years that these Republicans were in charge, 6 of them with near total domination of government here in Washington under the Bush-Cheney Administration, they failed to enact 1 of these 12 platitudes in this flimsy, 2-page excuse of a bill. Twelve health care platitudes up now, missing in inaction for 12 years.
"And who wouldn't be for some of them? They're broad platitudes that propose something that they apparently kept hidden under a bushel for the last 16 years and now will unveil.
"Well, I think it'll just be the same old tired, rejected, retread Republican proposals to give more income tax breaks to those at the top, and if you believe that they've got something new to offer to genuinely reform our health care system in a way that will help middle class Americans instead of health insurance monopolies, I think you'll want to buy some of that Republican ice cream that helps you lose weight.
"Our families don't need Republican platitudes, they need real help.
"And I have to say, I think the Tea Party types are right about one thing: there are dangers from soaring debt— dangers they forgot for a decade. There are dangers from big government. But you know that's not the only threat our families face. They face threats from big banks, from big insurance monopolies, from the big pharmaceutical monopolies that charge our people more than any place in the world. And sometimes, our families need government to come down on our side, because otherwise, those giant economic forces will take advantage of our families by writing out the very protection that the sick and injured need the most—protection that they write into the fine print of an insurance policy that no ordinary person can understand, where you are told you are not covered anymore, that you have a pre-existing condition, that you have reached your policy limits and cannot get the care your doctors says is vital to sustain your life, that this policy just doesn't cover sick people, or that it can be rescinded.
"I say we need to provide people genuine protection—that's what we did last year; that's what they want to eliminate this year. Let's be on the side of the people, not the 12 Republican platitudes to benefit insurance monopolies."
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