Hughes, Costa To Introduce Discharge Resolution 

            HARRISBURG, June 3 - State Sens. Vincent Hughes and Jay Costa announced today that they will introduce a discharge resolution in the Senate tomorrow intending to secure a vote on a plan to expand health insurance coverage in Pennsylvania.

            “More than five years ago researchers estimated that the number of people dying as a direct result of not having health insurance rivals the number of victims of homicides,” Hughes said. “The people of Pennsylvania want us to put a stop to this, and we can.”

            Senate Bill 1137 was amended in the House to include a compromise plan to provide health insurance coverage to more than 250,000 Pennsylvanians.  It passed the House easily, but remains stalled in the Senate Rules Committee.

            “The cost of health care is a concern that is shared by Pennsylvania businesses and workers,” Costa said. “By creating a large pool of insurance to protect low income workers, we can ease the worries of working families and the businesses that employ them.”

            While recent polls show that the cost of health care is a chief worry of Pennsylvania families – and the cause of half of all bankruptcies-- Hughes and Costa challenged the Senate’s Republican majority send the bill to the floor for a vote.

            “We intend to let democracy do what politics has failed to do,” Hughes said. “And that is to give a voice on the Senate floor to Pennsylvania’s working families.  You can’t bar the door and keep them out.”

            The Senate Banking and Insurance Committee held a hearing on the bill today, but limited testimony to the subject of insurance subsidies for doctors, and not the issue of health insurance.