Representative Edward J. Markey made the following statement during the House Energy and Commerce Committee consideration of the Children’s Health and Medicine Protection Act, legislation to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and to provide health insurance to 11 million children who today are eligible for coverage under the program. With Committee passage, this bill now moves to the full House Floor for debate.

Thank you Chairman Dingell, Chairman Pallone for your tremendous work in putting together this package which will provide health coverage for 11 million poor children.

The Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act is an excellent bill that in addition to providing health insurance for 5 million currently uninsured children, will also strengthen our Medicare system and provide more benefits and protections for low-income seniors.

The CHAMP act will also repeal the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), which I call the System for Gutting Reimbursements, and prevent the 10% cut to physician reimbursement rates this year and the 5% cut next year. This will ensure that seniors in the Medicare program can continue to have access to their doctors and physicians will be adequately paid for their services.

The United States has highest GDP in the world. We are first in technology; First in the number of millionaires and billionaires.

But we rank 18th in life expectancy, we have the highest rate of infant mortality in the industrialized world and we still have 9 million children who are uninsured.

Last year 18,000 Americans died because they were uninsured and did not have access to health care. Many of them were children.

We may have the best medicine in the world, but we have no conscience if we deny the most vulnerable among us, the poor children of our country, access to that care.

Today we are investing $50 billion dollars in the future of our children’s healthcare.

Today, we are making a commitment to 11 million children that they will not have go without the medicine they need.

Today, we are beginning to fulfill our promise to the children and seniors of our country.

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

By passing this bill to provide healthcare to our poorest children, we are truly making progress as a nation.

Once again, Mr. Dingell, Mr. Pallone, I thank you for your tremendous work and I am proud to support this landmark legislation.