Kagen Applauds Senate for Taking a Positive Step Forward on Health Care

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 24, 2009

KAGEN APPLAUDS SENATE FOR TAKING A POSITIVE STEP FORWARD ON HEALTH CARE

(APPLETON, WI)  Congressman Steve Kagen, M.D. congratulates the United States Senate on their passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, moving America one step closer to meaningful health care reform.

“On this Christmas Eve, everyone in America is a winner. The Senate just made history by passing life saving insurance reform legislation to begin to secure access to care for all of us,” Dr. Kagen said. “Yesterday, a woman came up to me while shopping for gifts and said all she wanted for Christmas was a health care bill that would cover her family and small business employees. Well, the Congress was listening and responded.”

“We are working hard to fix what is broken and improve on what we already have, at a price we can all afford to pay.  The Senate bill still leaves some work to be done, but we are making steady progress by putting patients first.”

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will ensure that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and will create the transformation within the health care system necessary to contain costs.  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended, is also fully paid for, will provide coverage to more than 94 percent of Americans, and will reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the next ten years, with additional deficit reductions in the following years.

With the passage of the Senate bill, the House and Senate must now merge their two bills at Conference.  Both the House and Senate must then pass the combined legislation before it would go to the President who must sign it to become law.

“This process of reforming America’s health care system is the most challenging conversation of our generation. I will continue to work hard to ensure that patients are in control of their health care, along with their own personal physicians.  I look forward to supporting legislation that contains at a minimum three essential elements: no discrimination against any citizen due to any pre-existing medical condition; the establishment of a standard health benefits policy that all insurers must offer to every citizen within the largest purchasing pools possible; and the formation of an openly competitive medical marketplace in which the prices for all medical products and services are always transparent and openly disclosed to the public, including on the Internet.”

###