Biden Tells State Insurance Commissioners Health Care System Needs to be Changed
BIDEN SPEECH
New Bedford Standard Times
Burcu Karakas
Boston University Washington News Service
Sept. 22, 2009
WASHINGTON—Vice President Joe Biden told state insurance commissioners Tuesday that the health insurance status quo needed to be changed immediately.
Biden spoke to members of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners at the group’s annual conference in a nearby Maryland suburb, telling them the need to change the system is for everyone and “not only for those who don’t have health insurance.”
Health insurance premiums have gone up 90-150 percent over the past decade, he said, and “the status quo of rising premiums is simply unsustainable for families, for businesses, for state budgets and for our national economy.”
The vice president highlighted the possible economic boost that a health-care overhaul would give to insurers by increasing the number of healthy and young customers. Reform, he said, would not kill competition or diminish profits and would have a positive impact on the economy.
“As many as 45,000 people per year die owing to a lack of health insurance,” he said, referring to a recent Harvard University study.
Biden told of a woman who wanted the federal government to keep its hands out of Medicare, which the vice president noted is federally financed. “People don’t understand 46 cents out of every dollar for health care is paid for by the federal government now,” he said.
“If we do nothing, health care costs are going to swallow the entire budget,” Biden said. He expressed the need for “spending money to make money.”
Biden stated his pleasure with the consensus that has formed in the health-care debate. “There is a broad agreement,” he said, among doctors, nurses, drug companies, hospitals and labor unions.
###
