Healthcare

"This week, members of Congress will make be making a stark choice. Do we stand with the millions of people without coverage and millions more one pink slip away from health care ruin? Or do we stand with the entrenched interests who will do all they can to stop reform to maximize their profits at the expense of patients? I believe every American deserves access to affordable health care coverage, and I will do all I can to make that happen."

"We are at the crossroads of history. We can either choose to expand health insurance coverage to 31 million uninsured Americans or let the insurance industry continue the status quo of pre-existing conditions, high premiums, and record corporate profits. There’s still time to pass a bill that does the right thing for the American people."

"With this bill, we force America’s health insurance industry into the same market that we want all American industry to be in: the free market competitive system. This is simple. Insurance companies should not be able to monopolize the health insurance marketplace," Congressman Garamendi said. "For 65 years, the insurance industry has used the anti-trust exemption to collude against consumers, fixing prices and raising rates well above inflation. Enough is enough."

"When almost every other industry colludes at the expense of consumers, we call it a crime. When the health insurance industry colludes, we call it business as usual," Congressman Garamendi said. "This legislation removes one of the most damaging weapons in the insurance industry’s arsenal: the ability to manipulate the market together behind closed doors. In my eight years regulating the insurance industry in California, what I learned above all else is that you can’t trust the insurance industry to regulate itself. Insurance company executives will scratch and claw their way to maximum profit, and they don’t care who gets hurt along the way."

"I believe that everyone should retire with dignity, and I am very alarmed by the proposal put forth by the Republican members of the House Budget Committee, who apparently want to throw millions of seniors into the shark tank that created the near collapse of our economy. It’s important that Congress repudiate this dangerous plan immediately. Millions of seniors depend on Social Security and Medicare to provide them with their retirement and health care needs, and this proposal amounts to an astounding cut in health benefits and fiscal security. Our seniors are too important to expose to the rollercoaster fluctuations of Wall Street."