Sen. John Kerry spoke about children's health care coverage today at a conference for the nonprofit group Families USA. Here is the transcript.
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KERRY: Thank you very, very much.
Thank you, Ron, for a more than generous introduction. As you were rolling through those 'more votes than, more votes than, more votes than,' I was just waiting for you to announce that somewhere in Ohio you found more votes.
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I am really, really pleased to be here with all of you. I must say I did have to travel a few more blocks than I'd hoped to get here. But what wonderful audience and what a wonderful welcome.
I want you all to know that according to the exit polls are 2 million people here in this room right now.
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It is a great pleasure for me to be here and I want to thank Ron. I want to thank you all for what you do.
I particularly want you to join me in thanking an old friend of mine from Massachusetts who, together with his wife, Kate, has helped us all be here today. He's had a long time commitment to these efforts and to justice in our country. And I'm talking, of course, about Phil Villers.
I want to say thank you to him for -- and Kate. Thank you.
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And, Mildred, congratulations on your rise to stardom. And we appreciate the cause in which we rose.
Thank you, all of you, for your long-standing willingness to stand up and fight for things that are right and that really make a difference to the quality of life in our country. Thank you for fighting for the values of working families across America.
Over the course of the last two years, I experienced the special privilege, the remarkable privilege, the eye-opening privilege, of crisscrossing this great nation of ours and meeting with people who love their communities, who love our country, and who, particularly, are trying to build a better life for their children.
What I saw and what they told me was both moving and motivating.
I'll never forget a single mother who told me what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night or stay up some nights worrying about her ability to be able to pay for a child's health care, which she doesn't have, and take an entire month or two months or more of salary to be able to do it.
KERRY: Moms and dads who've saved and saved to be able to send their kids to college and then they never quite make it, because their moms and dads don't get enough through Medicare or run into some kind of crisis that isn't covered and so the college fund is depleted.
In Erie, Pennsylvania I met a man named Albert Barker (ph). He wonders how he's going to pay for thousands of dollars of medical bills.
He suffered a heart attack and he underwent surgery. And his employer then stopped his coverage, as we all know, just because it was too expensive, decided not to cover it at the time when he most needed it. It was too expensive, and his wife, as a result, says she just prays that nothing is going to happen.
The message to all of us is clear. In the United States of America we shouldn't have to rely on a faith-based initiative for health care. We should rely on real health care.
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In Council Bluffs, Iowa, I met a remarkable woman named Marilyn Walks (ph) who's 82-years-old, and she still goes down and volunteers at the school, helps the children of the future to be able to learn.
But she's struggling and doesn't have enough money in her Social Security check to be able to pay for her monthly prescription drugs that she needs. Her only source of income is Social Security, and every month she's worried about her ability to be able to take care of the drug store bill.
In Jacksonville, Florida, I met a woman by the name of Renee Harris (ph) who, for years -- I think about 50 years -- her family owned a bus company. And she finally had to sell the bus company because the cost of health insurance for her and her employees were so prohibitive that she just didn't know how to make ends meet and she sells the company.
That's wrong. And in this country, we know we can do better.
KERRY: In Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, I was at a porch meeting with families and this woman stood up, and she pointed to her two daughters down the line and said, 'See those two girls there, those two wonderful teenagers?' She said, 'I'm tired of having to say no to them all the time.' We say no to them every day because of the balancing act of costs -- where the salaries of the average American have gone down, while the costs of almost everything, particularly health care, have gone up.'
I met people like Laurie Shelton (ph), the mother who told me that she's tired of saying no. I've met them all over this country.
And every single one of you seated at tables here who work in these efforts -- you know these folks. They're your neighbors. For some of you they're your families. They may be you. They are our fellow Americans. And all across this country, people are struggling with something as fundamental as health care.
That was a principle issue and you know that I saw those people, all through the campaign, and talked about it. That issue did not disappear on November 2nd. It is as important today as it was then.
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The issue is as compelling today as it has ever been, even more compelling, because it grows in its importance as more and more people lose their health insurance. And the mission is clear: We need to make something happen about health care in America, and we need to make it happen now, this year, not next year, now.
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So today I want you to stand up again, as you did over the course of these last months. I want you to become part of this fight.
This is, after all, the democracy that is supposed to set the example for the rest of the world. This is the democracy that we are spending several hundred billion dollars to export to one other nation and other nations across the planet. And we need to put a few of our own dollars into our own effort to make it work right here at home now.
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KERRY: Simply put, America can no longer afford to ignore -- not just 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance, and that's something, as Ron said, I will talk about later -- but let's begin in the beginning place where, hopefully, we could all agree, that is, the children of America who are not covered by health insurance.
On Monday, I introduced the Kid's First Act of 2005. And it will cover every single one of the 11 million uninsured children in America, putting the force of law behind the commitment that so many Democrats and Republicans have supported in principle over the years -- a commitment that this Congress, and this administration have failed to redeem for far too long.
Just think about it. Nearly 7 million of those 11 million children are actually already eligible for coverage under the federal and state Medicaid and SCHIP programs.
But guess what? They're not getting the fulfillment and delivery of that promise that has already been made, and that's wrong.
So we break a fundamental promise to these children again and again, each and every day, just by embracing the status quo.
The cost of our broken promises, and the burden that we place on families, on businesses, on communities and on the states, is rising every single day.
You know the numbers: health care premiums, up 65 percent; drug copays are up 50 percent; deductibles are up -- many numbers, different programs, different amounts, but they're all up; benefits, in many cases, are down.
Health care average premiums across America are up $3,500 over the last few years.
KERRY: Most Americans' salaries did not rise by that amount. And the ranks of the uninsured went up by 5 million people, now amounting to the 45 million that we see.
And everybody understands that as that goes up, more and more people uninsured, we have a less and less efficient delivery system, more and more people in extremis coming to the hospital, higher and higher cost of care when we take care of them, and the system revolves into this plummeting spiral downwards.
The ranks of the uninsured are growing and health care is out of reach for the average Americans, and those who get it struggle, often, through a kind of 'whether or not you're really covered' set of debates or 'whether or not you're really going to get paid' debates and struggle with the coverage that they have.
I fought these last two years, as Ron said in his introduction, for a comprehensive plan. It expanded coverage and it lowered premiums. It brought 27 million Americans into the system.
But that is not what I am here to talk about today, because the Washington that we confront today is unwilling, simply unwilling to tackle comprehensive reform.
But we can begin, I am convinced, where the cost of immediate action is low and where the cost of continued inaction is so very high, and that is with the children of America.
Today the president of the United States is in Ohio and he is addressing this issue of health care in Ohio. But his effort, I regret to say to you, is the same window dressing, the same avoidance of reality that we've seen throughout the last four years.
Unfortunately, the White House plans for health care will actually make health care delivery in America worse.
The White House will let insurance rates get higher, not lower. It will abandon still more families and kids to fend for themselves. It'll force still more people out of cheap, preventative programs and into higher-cost, more expensive, intensive delivery systems.
KERRY: And the rest of us will be footing the bill. And it will decisively repudiate the national responsibility to promote quality affordable health care at a time when health care is, unmistakably, a national challenge.
So pare back, take away all the rhetoric, and the White House plan is this: Let's not import less expensive drugs. Let's not negotiate better drug prices here in America.
Let's ignore the 45 million Americans who have no health insurance at all. Let's forget about patients' rights. Let's weaken coverage. Let's raise premiums with a phony small-business health plan.
And let's pretend that the answer for families struggling to afford insurance is just another tax cut, mostly for the wealthy, that leaves the average American behind.
And, while we're at it, let's dump the responsibility for covering low-income families and their kids on the states who can't afford it, and let them take the heat for dumping people altogether.
My friends, we are going to reject that kind of approach to health care in America.
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That's how the president, who promised to usher in a responsibility era, I'm quoting him -- 'A responsibility era proposes to deal with the real and present health care crisis of our nation,' even as he seeks to hype a phony crisis in Social Security.
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You know what it sounds like to me? A cradle-to-grave irresponsibility plan.
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My Kids' First Proposal is meant to serve as the first reasonable, practical, achievable step toward bringing people into the health care system in a way that would reduce costs and improve care and, most importantly, improve the quality of life for America's children and families.
And when it comes to giving kids health care coverage, it's a promise that we, not only can afford to keep, it's one that we really can't afford to break.
KERRY: Covering all kids will reduce avoidable hospitalizations by 22 percent.
It will, if you put aside the unnecessary pain and tragedy that we cause when we let illnesses develop and grow -- and there's no way to quantify it, but put that aside -- covering kids means replacing expensive, critical care with inexpensive preventive care, and in many cases for some children, it means avoiding a learning disability for a lifetime.
And the long-term cost savings, not only in health care, but in education, in job training, in stress on our families, are incalculable. We do know that children who are enrolled in public health insurance programs achieve a 68 percent improvement in the measurements in their school performance. That's stunning.
If no child is left behind in the doctor's waiting rooms, my friends, we have a much better chance of leaving no child behind in the schools of America.
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Now, while our proposal most definitely establishes a national responsibility for children's health care, it does something else that's important. It also builds a strong relationship with the states.
And the states, as we know, are already struggling under the burden. We're not talking about expanding children's care in this administration, we're talking -- they're talking about cutting Medicaid.
And the states are feeling this extraordinary burden. The governors all across the country are looking for a way out.
Well, this is the way out. And it's also the way in for the children of America and for our families.
KERRY: It builds a strong partnership with the states. And they're the ones who are actually responsible, as you know, for administering the day-to-day issues of health care in this country. And it also builds a partnership with parents, who are fundamentally responsible for their children.
Instead of dumping the problem on cash-strapped states with a severance check and best wishes for success, my proposal offers states a new bargain, a very simple bargain: The national government will give states significant, immediate fiscal relief, in exchange for state commitment to cover all of its kids, but not only to cover all of its kids, but to make sure that they aggressively guarantee that those kids get what they are eligible for.
That means cutting the red tape that currently stands in the way of enrollments for a lot of kids. It means doing away with the bureaucratic obstacles that are responsible for about two-thirds of the gap between the kids who, today, are eligible for coverage, but don't get it.
You know why the states will decide to do this and think it's a great idea? Because it is a net plus in dollars reimbursed to the states of our country. This makes sense. It's common sense.
So we propose a new bargain, not just with the states, but also with parents. We're going to make it possible for parents to use some of the money that we put available and set it aside for children's health care so they can actually go out and buy employer-sponsored coverage, if it's available, and they can use this in order to do that. So it's not necessarily just a state program.
We also will allow parents who don't normally qualify for public programs to be able to buy coverage for their kids at cost.
KERRY: So there will be available, affordable coverage for those parents who fall in between, who don't buy it, and they will be able to buy it at that affordable cost.
So their side of the bargain is that they've got to take advantage of these tools in order to get their kids covered. And the way we encourage that is make sure that if they don't exercise this basic, fundamental parental responsibility, they're not going to be able to claim the child tax credit on their federal tax returns.
I don't think that's asking too much, ladies and gentlemen. We ask people with a driver's license to go out and get their car insured. We ought to ask parents in America who can afford it to get their kids insured with health care and that's what we're going to do.
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There's one other basic responsibility that we accept in proposing this initiative and that's the responsibility to show how we're going to pay for it.
And even though we know that there's a long-term payoff in the reduction of those hospitalizations, the 22 percent, in the kids who get the preventative care and therefore don't have the learning disability. You can pay for this -- you can quantify that over time.
But we're not going to wait for that. We're going to do what's responsible, what has not been done here in this city. And we're going to show exactly how we're going to pay for it now.
In the proposal called Kids First, I will not add to the debt of this nation, which is now being piled on kids.
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The administration's version of this initiative is kids pay first.
My proposal will finance the coverage entirely by asking something back from the least-needy beneficiaries of Washington's big borrowing spree, individuals who earn well over $300,000 a year.
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And we're not going to do it with anything new.
KERRY: We're just going to ask people to show the responsibility of going back to something old that worked.
We're going to roll back a small portion of that tax cut that was put in place for the most fortunate citizens, who did fabulously during the 1990's, and we're not even going to get close to the level that they were paying in the 1990's. In other words, you can take care of the children in America and not even go back to the same level of taxation we were in the 1990's.
I believe that is a choice worth making. It's a choice worth fighting for. And if you want to put values in front of this country, that's a value that I think is worth standing up for.
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Like all Americans, the wealthiest among us would actually benefit greatly from covering all kids -- through less taxpayer- financed, uncompensated care pools, fewer state and local tax increases in the short run, and through stronger families and communities that ultimately benefit the country as a whole, and a better educated and trained workforce in America.
That is the value of shared responsibility, and this is, I think, a test of who really believes in a United States of America.
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Let me just say a quick word about this also. In a city where politicians like to use the word values, insuring kids is really a test of who just talks about family values and who actually values families.
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And I think that in the Book of James -- and I said this a few times in the campaign, maybe I should have said it more...
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...but in the Book of James, we are taught that it is not enough, my brother, to say that you have faith if there are no works. Faith without works is dead.
And for me, that means having and holding to a vision of our society -- of the common bond, where individual rights and freedoms are connected to our responsibility, each to each other.
It means understanding that the authentic role of leadership is to advance the good that can come to all of us when we work together as a united community.
KERRY: It means health care for every child in America. And if anyone wants to have a debate in Washington about those values, let's have at it. That's worth having.
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So my message to you, all of you here as you go out here this afternoon and tomorrow when you leave, is to take back to your communities a reality check about what we can and can't achieve.
Ron talked about the forces that we unleashed in the course of that campaign: more volunteers, more young people, more money raised, more effort and energy combined.
Some people like to talk about the mandates, but I say to you that I think the mandate is children. I think the mandate is to address the needs of this country that everybody understands they're waiting for leadership.
So here's my message to you as you go out of here with this concept and in the days ahead.
We long since have needed to keep our promise to the kids of America. It's unconscionable that children are so easily buffeted by the vagaries of our politics.
To achieve this, we don't need to expand government. We can actually make it smaller.
We don't need new bureaucracy. We can have less.
We don't need to have a Washington do more than it can or should. We simply need a Washington that's willing to be a partner and to work with states and parents in common sense and in common bond.
What we offer here are new opportunities as bold and as innovative as the latest medical breakthroughs themselves. And what we call upon are the mutual obligations, as old, as unchanging as the scriptures themselves.
KERRY: The best way to create a genuine responsibility era in America, a genuine commitment to families and to the values that they reflect, is to begin with those to whom we owe the greatest responsibility, those whom we most value, those who most depend on us for the wisdom of our judgment and the commitment of our values.
Those values, in my judgment, begin not with talk, but they begin by doing something. And what we can do is guarantee that kids are put first and kids have the health care they deserve.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
Thank you.
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