Over the past year, Capitol Hill has been portrayed as ground zero in the health care debate. But the heart of the fight was never in D.C. Rather, it was in the millions of households across the country, where the uninsured and the underinsured live in fear, knowing that they can't afford to get sick or even find insurance companies willing to enroll them because of pre-existing conditions. Just a week after the House passed landmark legislation to finally change that, Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Foster was back in the 14th District today. There some of his constituents made the case for why the nation can't afford to wait any longer to see those reforms through.

"My husband and I, we've done everything right," Amy Ruppert of Batavia said, "We don't have any outstanding debt. We've paid all of our bills." But with her COBRA plan set to expire within months and a pre-existing condition prohibiting her from buying into a new plan, "we will be one step away from catastrophic financial devastation," she said. Watch: