made, such as medicare, medicaid, and the children's health insurance program, efforts at coomp rehencive reform that covers -- at comprehensive reform thats everyone and brings down cost has largely failed. partly because the different groups involved, doctors, insurance companies, businesses, workers, and others simply couldn't agree on the need for reform or what shape it would take. and if we're honest, another part of the reason has been the fierce opposition fueled by some interest groups and lobbyists, on sigs that has used fear tactics to paint any effort to achieve reform as an attempt to, yes, socialize medicine. despite this long history of failure, i'm standing here because i think we're in a different time. one sign that things are different is just this past week, the senate passed a bill that will protect children from the dangers of smoker a reform the a.m.a. has long championed. [applause] something this organization championed, it went nowhere when it was proposed a decade ago, i'm going to sign this into law. what makes this -- [applause] what make this is moment differ

now, we can call the conduct of the insurance company rep rehence and immoral, i sometimes that i have to admit. we can bemoan the fact that the law says the insurance company has afiduciary obligation with their stockholders but has no to its insureds. but we must also say, and we note that we know that the system exists, that we know that some insurance companies give bonuses to their claims managers who deny claims or rescind policies, that we know this and yet we have done nothing to correct this heartbreaking misconduct. these devastating eventually terminal diseases -- i have one -- are difficult. we know this too. and you know this because your case managers walk hand in hand with a lot of these patients through this difficult process in their care and treatment. statistics being what they are and also because i met a lot of you as we did the book signing earlier, i know that there are survivors of my disease in this room, and i want to thank you for being my companions on this road, but you know -- [applause] and i actually talked at least to one of you about this, you know the