Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-Cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2005
HELP EFFICIENT, ACCESSIBLE, LOW-COST, TIMELY HEALTHCARE (HEALTH) ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - July 28, 2005)
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
All the public should know on this bill is that no Democrats were allowed to make any amendments to this bill. They were not allowed to debate this bill. Even the great gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) of the Committee on the Judiciary, no amendments allowed. None. No thought required by half of the Congress. And do the Members want to know why? Because this bill is really the pluperfect payback of the Republican Party to the insurance industry. This bill will victimize patients in the courtroom after they have already been victimized in the operating room. That is what it is all about.
The premise of the bill is this, and it is not a bad premise: If they are willing to lower the amount of money that somebody can receive for the pain and suffering that they have had inflicted upon them by some medical operation, then, in turn, there will be a lowering of the premiums that doctors have to pay. That is kind of the trade-off that the Republicans have. Lower return for the patients for their pain and suffering, but we also get, as a result, lower premiums for the doctors.
But 2 years ago when I made the amendment in the Committee on Energy and Commerce that would have said that all of the savings from the pain and suffering of patients would
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then go to lowering of premiums for doctors, every Republican voted against that because the insurance industry does not want the money to go to lower premiums for doctors. And then this year when I wanted to make an amendment in the Committee on Energy and Commerce that would have said the same thing, lower premiums, I was not allowed to make the amendment. Out here on the House floor, I was not allowed to make the amendment.
So it is not about lowering the premiums for physicians with the money that is ``saved'' from the money that would have gone to someone whose family had been harmed because they might have lost their sight, their limbs, their ability to bear children, their ability to fully function in society. All of those savings for the insurance industry, they are very real. But the lowering of medical malpractice fees is only illusory.
And, secondly, the bill will protect the pharmaceutical industry from liability as long as the drugs that harm patients are FDA-approved. The FDA approval is designed to protect patients from harmful drugs, but it should not waive a company's responsibility for drugs they put on the market. With all of the recent reports about how FDA approved drugs that harmed people, from Vioxx to Bextra to Accutane to Paxil, now is not the time to limit patients' access to the courts, but that is what the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry is going to get on the House floor today.
Vote ``no'' on this bill.
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