This system is riddled with inefficiency, with abuse, with fraud, and everybody knows it.  In today’s health care system, insurance companies call the shots.  They pick whom they cover and how they cover them.  They can cut off your benefits when you need your coverage the most.  They are in charge.

What does it mean?  It means every night millions of well-insured Americans go to bed just an illness, an accident, or a pink slip away from having no coverage or financial ruin.  It means every morning millions of Americans go to work without any health insurance at all—­something the workers in no other advanced country in the world do.  It means that every year more and more hard working people are told to pick a new doctor because their boss has had to pick a new plan.  And countless others turndown better jobs because they know, if they take the better job, they’ll lose their health insurance.

If we just let the health care system continue to drift, our country will have people with less care, fewer choices, and higher bill.

Now, our approach protects the quality of care and people’s choices.  It builds on what works today in the private sector, to expand employer based coverage, to guarantee private insurance for every American.  And I might say, employer based private insurance for every American was proposed 20 years ago by President Richard Nixon to the United States Congress.  It was a good idea then, and it’s a better idea today.

Why do we want guaranteed private insurance?  Because right now, nine out of ten people who have insurance get it through their employers—­and that should continue.  And if your employer is providing good benefits at reasonable prices, that should continue too.  And that ought to make the Congress and the president feel better.  Our goal is health insurance everybody can depend on—­comprehensive benefits that cover preventive care and prescription drugs, health premiums that don’t just explode when you get sick or you get older, the power—­no matter how small your business is —­to choose dependable insurance at the same competitive rates that governments and big business get today, one simple form for people who are sick, and most of all, the freedom to choose a plan and the right to choose your own doctor.

Our approach protects older Americans.  Every plan before the Congress proposes to slow the growth of Medicare.  The difference is this.  We believe those savings should be used to improve health care for senior citizens.  Medicare must be protected, and it should cover prescription drugs, and we should take the first steps in covering long-term care.

To those who would cut Medicare without protecting seniors, I say the solution to today’s squeeze on middle class working people’s health care is not to put the squeeze on middle class retired people’s health care.  We can do better than that.  When it’s all said and done, it’s pretty simple to me.  Insurance ought to mean what it used to mean.  You pay a fair price for security, and when you get sick, health care is always there—­no matter what.