waxman, dingle, platts, who did extraordinary work in getting this to move forward. i want to thank all of them but there are three i have to thank, waxman, sen. dodd, [laughter] >> and most importantly, sen. ted kennedy, who cannot be here today. this legislation represents change decades in the making. since the middle of last century we have known about the deadly effects of tobacco products. 400,000 die every year, making this the legal will cause of preventable death in the united states. nearly 8 million merit -- million americans suffer from something caused by smoking, and this costs us over $100 billion a year. even worse is the effect on our children. one out of every five children are current smokers by the time they leave high school. every day over 1000 children become smokers, much of this began before the 18th birthday. i was one of those teenagers and i know how difficult this habit can be to break. and i know that children do not begin for no reason. they are targeted by the tobacco industry, and are exposed. raj of advertising where they live and le

our three chairman ask asked that that i remember dingle be the author of this bill. every year since he has been here he has been the author of universal health care. before that, his father was. he zpwaveled medicare. -- gaveled down medicare. very few republican votes by the way on medicare. so we have heard the same concerns before. but it is -- it is a pretty -- as i said, this is life work for many members of congress and it certainly is the responsibility for all of us. this will happen. we told the president we would have a bill by the end of july. that it would be paid for and that's the course of action that we're in. i commend our three chairman, rangel, waxman and miller for working together, limiting any chank challenges that occurred in the 1990's and to facilitate this improvement in the lives of the american people. >> the senate passed tobacco bill barring unexpected amendment in the next couple of days. >> when we see the bill i can give you a more definite answer. from what i have seen so far, i believe it will be possible for us to accept their bil

dingle for an opening statement, please. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i commend you for holding this hearing on the rather vicious practice of post-claims underwriting. and the detrimental effect that such practices have on hundreds of americans. and i want to thank the witnesses for appearing in what i hope will be an inform a tiff hearing today on which the committee may begin some actions to correct what appears to be a very serious abuse. i remember mr. barton, the way we worked together on this in your outrage last year when we were addressing similar questions. health care costs have risen sharply. in response to this insurance providers who have taken drastic measures to reduce costs and improve profit margins. unfortunately the health insurance industry has attempted to do soy giving in to unscrupulous industry practices, including the practice of post-claims underwriting. i want to be clear, i have no sympathy for individuals who intentionally misrepresent their health status in the applications they submit for health insurance coverage. these

and thanks to the work of among others congressman mariano mac, ed towns, chairman dingle, those spy wear infections are not near the problem that they used to be. however, today companies continue to gather, maintain and use data to a variety of technological methods. some of those companies such as verizon and comcast are large companies. they're regulated in some parts of their business model. and i think they are trying to act appropriately. there are other companies, so-called isp low cadeers, that we don't -- locaters that i personally don't even know their name. then you have the in between companies, the so-called edge companies like yahoo! and google. put together, it still is a little bit of a wild west out there. and i think it's time that congress begin to look at that and try to bring some law and order into that particular wild west area. i see that my time has expired, mr. chairman. so i'll submit the rest of the statement for the record. suffice it to say that i'm glad that you and congressman boucher are working with the republicans in taking a serious look at this.