Steny Hoyer:Health care status quo would be disaster for middle class

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts839

How’s this for a health care plan? It will make your premiums go up—in fact, it will double health costs over the next ten years. It will strip millions of Americans of their coverage. It will send our deficit through the roof.

That, as President Obama recently pointed out, is the health care plan we choose by doing nothing. That is the status quo, and it will be the health care plan we end up with if health insurance reform fails.

And although no one will come out and argue for a plan that doubles costs and cuts coverage, we are being pushed in just that direction by transparent attempts to kill reform for partisan gain. As one Republican Senator put it, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Another said this about efforts to cover millions more Americans: “We can stall it. And that’s going to be a huge gain for those of us who want to turn this thing over in the 2010 election.”

Failure to reform health care might be a boon for some members of Congress, but it would be a disaster for middle-class families, for the 47 million uninsured Americans, and for small businesses across America.

That’s why Democrats are working hard to get a health care bill to President Obama’s desk this fall. The details of that bill are still under strong debate—which is healthy considering the historic challenge we face. But Democrats are unshakably committed to four driving principles: health insurance stability, affordability, quality, and patient choice.