Weekly Address: Health Reform Will Benefit American Families and Businesses This Year

.  There will no longer be lifetime limits or restrictive annual limits on the amount of care you receive.  Young adults will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance policy until they’re 26 years old.  And there will be a new, independent appeals process for anyone who feels they were unfairly denied a claim by their insurance company. 

Finally, seniors who fall into the gap in coverage known as the donut hole will receive $250 to help them pay for their prescriptions.  

What won’t change when this bill is signed this:  if you like the insurance plan you have now, you can keep it.  If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.  Because nothing should get in the way of the relationship between a family and their doctor.  

If we act now, all of this will happen this year.  Millions of lives will improve.  Some will be saved.  Many families and small business owners will have health insurance for the very first time in their lives.  Doctors and patients will have more control over their health care decisions, and insurance company bureaucrats will have less.  This future is within our grasp.  

But we also know what the future will look like if we don’t act – if we let this opportunity pass for another year, or another decade, or another generation.   More Americans will lose their family’s health insurance if they switch jobs or lose their job.  More small businesses will be forced to choose between health care and hiring.  More insurance companies will raise premiums and deny coverage.  And the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid will sink our government deeper and deeper into debt.

I don’t accept that future for the United States of America.  I know it has been a long and hard road to this point.  And we are not finished with our journey just yet.  But we are close.  We are very close.  And so I ask Congress to finish its work.  I ask them to give the American people an up or down vote.  And let’s show our citizens that it’s still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future.  Thanks for listening.