Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Michael Combier-Talk Radio News Service

Businesses in the the U. S. and ordinary citizens are struggling with their medical expenses, resulting in 62 percent of personal bankruptcies in 2008. Congress can no longer delay instituting healthcare reform, said U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), temporary Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions at a press conference this morning in Washington.

Leading the committee as a replacement for Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) who is suffering from a brain tumor, Dodd said that healthcare reform “will affect every single one of our citizens for years and years to come. And so getting busy about it is important, getting it right is important... (It is) the single most important domestic issue that we have to grapple with and we have to get going on it. We can’t delay in my view,” he said. “The estimates that families can be spending 50 percent of their gross income on health care premiums is just not sustainable.”

A legislative text of the Health Committee bill would be announced later today and is expected to contain “an aggressive schedule,” said Todd. The Committee wants to start having hearings by Friday and start to mark up the legislation on Tuesday of next week.

“This is a beginning...of a journey that will go on for weeks,” said Dodd adding that on the legislation to be introduced later today, “there are some gaps in it (the legislation), and done so intentionally but there are no gaps in our determination.”

This legislation will not make U.S. citizens change their health coverage if they are satisfied with it. “If you like what you’ve got, you get to keep it,” said Dodd. Additionally, no one will dictate to Americans what to choose and the choice of coverage will be left to the customers.

Every American needs to “have access to an affordable, high quality health care...Our economy depends upon it,” said Dodd. The constant rise in medical bills and the fact that health care represents around 18 percent of the country’s gross domestic product “is not only unacceptable, it is completely unsustainable. We just cannot sustain that.”