Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less.

Because of the president's leadership every American will have access to affordable quality health care.

Under the Healthy Americans Act you're in charge of your health care - not your employer. If you lose your job change jobs or just can't find a job your health insurance is guaranteed to stick with you.

It is hard to miss the irony in the fact that the very same week that Republicans were publicly heralding Congressman Paul Ryan's plan to inject market forces into the American health care system they were crafting a budget deal to strip them from the health reform law.

I believe the most important aspect of Medicare is not the structure of the program but the guarantee to all Americans that they will have high quality health care as they get older.

It's time to look beyond the budget ax to assure access to health care for all. It's time to look for bipartisan solutions to the problems we can tackle today and to work together for tomorrow - building a health care system that works for all Americans.

We are spending most of our time in American health care fixing the mistakes that either we in the profession are causing or our patients are without recognizing it causing to themselves.

And I believe that if we can care about whether or not our neighbor has a good job or access to affordable health care for their children and we move to implement the policies that can improve these situations we will unleash vast amounts of human potential and recapture the American spirit.

Since 1994 lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have considered it politically risky to offer a plan to fix America's broken health care system. The American public though has paid the price for this silence as health care costs skyrocketed millions went uninsured and millions more grappled with financial insecurity and hardship.

I mean the fight for a health care bill to cover all Americans and leave none behind is attacked as being a race appeal which is not true but then it's put out in the media as true.