Congressman Eric Massa Says Enough Is Enough

Press Release

Yesterday in meetings with House Leadership, Freshman Congressman Eric Massa urged all parties to start over in the fight for healthcare reform.

"I have asked that the thousands of pages of legislation so far developed be scrapped because it is my belief that we should focus primarily on reforming the largely unregulated health insurance sector. I believe that the virtual monopoly that private for-profit health insurance corporations have across our nation is the biggest reason why we are facing out of control healthcare costs."

Rep. Massa has been clear in his opposition to both the House and Senate healthcare bills for several months and, seeing an opportunity for true bipartisan health insurance reform, he spent most of Wednesday lobbying other Members of Congress to support a reset to the national healthcare debate. As of right now, we do not know the next step in the healthcare saga.

"I look to the results of the Senate race in Massachusetts as an opportunity to refocus our efforts to get it right. I will continue to work aggressively to create healthcare reform which reflects the concerns that I have heard at the 74 townhall meetings we've held in the 29th Congressional District. Specifically I want to see legislation that lowers costs, creates interstate portability, protects small businesses, increases access to Medicare, establishes true medical malpractice insurance reform based on access to care, closes the Medicare Part D donuthole, eliminates rejections based on pre-existing conditions, and delivers badly needed regulations to the monopolistic health insurance industry. Quite, frankly it might be a lot more feasible if we do this one piece at a time rather than with broad sweeping legislation."

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