Manzullo Urges President to Consider Bipartisan Alternatives to Make Health Care More Affordable, Accessible to Americans

Congressman Don Manzullo (R-IL) issued the following statement tonight in response to President Obama's address to Congress on health care reform:

"I know there are problems with our health care system - problems with too many Americans unable to get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, problems with too many arbitrarily dropped from their coverage, and problems with too many unable to afford the growing cost of health insurance. I have worked hard to try to solve these problems and I will continue to seek solutions. Unfortunately, the bill before us in the House causes more problems than it solves.

"As Chairman of the House Small Business Committee from 2001 to 2007, I held hearings throughout the nation and championed legislation to make health care more affordable and accessible to Americans. In the House, we passed bills to allow small employers to band together and purchase health insurance through national associations, and to place common sense limits on huge medical lawsuits. Unfortunately, we fell a few votes short in the Senate and the reform efforts ended.

"My advice to the President is to start over on health care reform, reach out to Democrats, Republicans and Independents, and let's work on some alternatives we can all agree on to strengthen our health care system.

We can adopt bipartisan measures to reduce costs and make health insurance more available to the uninsured without adding billions to our deficit, placing millions more jobs at risk, and threatening the private insurance millions of Americans enjoy. The key is, we must work together."

#DAL1234#