I 
109TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 6403 
To amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for Federal funding 
of a Bridges of Hope for Transitional Health Insurance Program to 
provide, through State inter-governmental public health authorities, dis-
placed employees with assistance for health insurance premiums for them-
selves and their families. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
DECEMBER 6, 2006 
Mr. SCHWARZ of Michigan introduced the following bill; which was referred 
to the Committee on Energy and Commerce 
A BILL 
To amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for 
Federal funding of a Bridges of Hope for Transitional 
Health Insurance Program to provide, through State 
inter-governmental public health authorities, displaced 
employees with assistance for health insurance premiums 
for themselves and their families. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Bridges of Hope for 
Transitional Health Insurance Act of 2006’’. 
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SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE. 
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds the following: 
(1) The national policy of advancing global free 
trade through treaties such as NAFTA, CAFTA and 
supporting the accession of certain countries to the 
World Trade Organization have opened the markets 
of the United States to a range of products that 
have facilitated the export of American jobs and re-
sulted in the enormous loss of employment in the 
United States for our citizens. 
(2) This transformation has not been accom-
panied by a Federal commitment to reorient, retrain, 
relocate, or re-employ individuals in selective State 
economies dependent upon a previously robust indus-
trial employment opportunity to minimal immediate 
new economic opportunities through well-funded 
temporary assistance and economic support program 
capable of breaching the loss of jobs and economic 
opportunities thereby leaving individuals in the de-
pressed States without the opportunity to maintain 
a decent quality of life and health security by threat-
ening the loss of health insurance coverage. 
(3) The responsibility for the transformation of 
State economies where economic dislocation occurs is 
the primary responsibility of the governmental unit 
whose policies caused such a change in the under-
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lying economic base and have such profound impacts 
that the State alone cannot be reasonably expected 
to mobilize financial resources to bring about pros-
perity when the State’s own tax resources are declin-
ing. 
(4) The impact has been to so erode the under-
lying structural base of a State that results in a de-
cline in funding for existing health safety and wel-
fare programs that may be supported by the State 
government. Acting alone the State government can-
not remedy the devastating impact on individuals 
who must alter the quality of their lifestyle so radi-
cally that health choices become beyond the reach of 
average families who have no where else to go. 
(5) In the State of Michigan alone the average 
unemployment rate has been 2.5 times the national 
average for over 56 months and the State is pro-
jected to lose more than 63,000 more factory jobs by 
2007 with no hope for rapid implementation to re- 
employ such individuals whose only real wealth is 
their homestead that cannot be relocated and whose 
skill levels. But these individuals cannot find em-
ployment to replace the wages they lost and they are 
risking foregoing payment of health insurance in 
order to preserve their homestead. 
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(6) The distress suffered by these State indus-
trial economies cannot be rectified by State Govern-
ments alone and it requires the intervention of the 
Federal Government to provide a bridge fund of 
transitional financial assistance to individuals to 
maintain their health insurance premium payments. 
(7) The Federal Government has the responsi-
bility to establish a health insurance premium en-
hancement program to provide individuals a con-
tinuity of care and continuum of lifestyles in a cir-
cumstance where the balance of cost-of-living ex-
penses and mortgage payments force them to aban-
don health care coverage and may subject them and 
their families to irreparable harm thereby endan-
gering the health safety and welfare of everyone in 
their communities. 
(b) PURPOSE.—The purpose of this Act is to estab-
lish a Bridges of Hope for Transitional Health Insurance 
Program to provide premium relief for individual workers 
through a local public health authorities acting as a fidu-
ciary on their behalf. 
SEC. 3. ESTABLISHMENT OF BRIDGES OF HOPE FOR TRAN-
SITIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—The Public Health Service Act is 
amended by adding at the end the following new title: 
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