Health Care

Floor Speech

HEALTH CARE -- (Senate - July 09, 2007)

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, like all of us in the Senate, I have just come back from a great week in Oregon. We own the summer. It is just wonderful to be home during these warm days and cool nights. Other parts of the country may have beautiful months other times in the year, but nobody can beat an Oregon summer.

I want to talk a little bit about what I heard as I moved around the State. What I heard again and again is that folks at home want the Senate to change course in Iraq, and they want us to fix health care. We are going to start on the first item today in a few minutes when we go to the Defense authorization bill. I believe very strongly that we don't support our courageous troops in Iraq by forcing them to referee a civil war there. I think it will become clear this week that there is growing and bipartisan interest in the Senate to set a specific deadline to force the Iraqis to make the decisions for themselves about how they will govern their Nation.

So what I want to do is talk for a few minutes about health care--something I know the President pro tempore of the Senate has a great passion about as well, and certainly folks are talking about today--because the need to fix health care is so great. Of course, many have flocked to the Michael Moore movie as well, generating additional debate about this issue.

The first matter on the health care agenda to come up is going to be the Children's Health Insurance Program. In my view, passing a strong program for kids is about erasing a moral blot on our Nation. It is unconscionable that millions of kids, youngsters in Rhode Island and Oregon and across the country, go to bed at night without good, quality, affordable health care. In a country as rich and strong as ours, as the majority leader, Senator Reid, noted earlier this afternoon, clearly we can do this, and we can do it in a bipartisan way.

The Senate Finance Committee is not going to pass a children's health program that becomes a Trojan horse for government-run health care. That is not going to happen in the Senate Finance Committee. The Senate Finance Committee is going to work in a bipartisan way under the leadership of Senator Baucus, working with Senator Grassley and Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hatch, and I am very hopeful that there will be bipartisan agreement over the next few days that targets the desperately needy youngsters in our country and is responsibly funded. I am hopeful that will come together this week, and members of the Senate Finance Committee will be working throughout the week on a bipartisan basis to bring that about.

But it is also very clear, in my view, that the State Children's Health Insurance Program was not created to solve our Nation's health care crisis. In fact, I think when we get on the floor debating the children's health program, the Senate will see and the country will see that this debate illustrates how broken our health care system is. We are clearly spending enough money; we are just not spending it in the right places.

For example, for the amount of money we are spending this year, our country could go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the United States and pay that doctor $200,000 a year to care for seven families. Whenever I bring this up with the physicians, they always say: Ron, where do I go to get my seven families? So, clearly, we are spending enough money, and we are going to use the dollars even more efficiently, as the Senator from Rhode Island brings us his very constructive proposals as they relate to better use of health information technology.

Second, I believe we have the possibility of a real ideological truce now in health care. As the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island knows from our hearing in the Senate Budget Committee, we saw a real consensus emerging just in the course of that hearing. I think it is very clear that Senators of both political parties understand that to fix health care, we must cover everybody. If we don't cover everybody, people who are uninsured shift their bills to folks who are insured. So colleagues on my side of the aisle who made the point about getting everybody coverage, in my view, have been accurate, and clearly the country and citizens of all political persuasions have come around to that point of view.

But as we saw in our hearing in the Senate Budget Committee just recently, there is also strong support for something the Republicans have felt strongly about, and that is not having the Government run everything in health care. There ought to be a role for a healthy private sector, one where there is a fairer and more efficient market, and there ought to be more choices; in fact, a system much like Members of Congress enjoy today.

I am very pleased that I could join with Senator Bennett of Utah, a member of the Republican leadership, in offering a bill based on just those principles. It is S. 334, the Healthy Americans Act, and it is the first bipartisan universal coverage bill in more than 13 years.

The distinguished President pro tempore of the Senate might be interested in some history. The last bipartisan, universal coverage health bill was offered by the late Senator Chafee--not his son but the late Senator Chafee--more than 13 years ago. So now we do have the opportunity for the Senate to come together on a bipartisan basis and deal with the premier challenge at home, and that is fixing American health care.

I and Senator Bennett also believe there are some key challenges to bringing this country together to fix health care, and we believe through our legislation we have been able to address it. The first is how do you make sure folks who do have coverage today--and that is the majority of the people of our country--have a system that works for them. So often in the past they have said: Well, we are not exactly pleased with what we have, but the devil we know is better than the devil we don't know, and those folks in Washington, we don't know if they can organize a two-car parade, let alone fix American health care.

So the first thing Senator Bennett and I said is for people who have insurance today, in Rhode Island, in Oregon, and elsewhere, we are going to take several steps to assure them that as part of fixing health care, we understand their needs.

The first is with the initial paychecks that are issued. If the Healthy Americans Act is adopted, workers win and employers win. Workers win because they will have more cash in their pocket, and they will have more private choices in a fixed marketplace where insurance companies can't cherry-pick.

And they will have lifetime security where no one can ever take their coverage away. Employers will win with the first paychecks as well because they will get out from under the staggering rates of cost growth in American health care.

We all know that employers in Rhode Island and Oregon and elsewhere see their premiums go up more than 13 percent annually--far in excess of the rate of inflation. We cannot have our employers compete in tough global markets when they sustain those kinds of premium hikes and the competition they are up against internationally has the benefit of government-run health care.

I think Senator Bennett and I have been able to make the kinds of changes in our bill that show we have learned from some of the mistakes in the past--most recently in 1993 and 1994, when Congress last tried to fix health care. One area we focused on is to make sure we can get the savings through cost containment right at the outset.

A group called the Lewin Group--considered the gold standard of health policy analysis--has looked at our legislation, and they found we generated savings through our legislation with the cost containment needed to fix health care. First, we redirect the money that is spent in the Federal Tax Code. Today, more than $200 billion is sent out through the Federal Tax Code so that if you are a high-flying CEO, you can go out and get a designer smile plastered on your face and write off the cost of that operation on your taxes. But if you are a hard-working woman who works at the corner furniture store in Rhode Island and your company doesn't have a health plan, you don't get anything. That is not right. So Senator Bennett and I redirect the money under the Federal Tax Code to give the bulk of the relief to people in the middle-income and lower middle-income brackets, and the Lewin organization found significant savings in our doing that.

They also found significant savings on the administrative side because we have a one-stop sign-up process, and all of the essential transactions are done through technology transfers. Once you sign up, you are in the system forever. They found significant administrative savings through that.

The third area they found specific savings in is what is called the disproportionate share program, where hospitals and the Government have to pick up the bills for folks who come to hospital emergency rooms and have no coverage. Clearly, it would be much better to have those folks having private coverage targeted at outpatient services so they can get their health care in a way that is better for them and better for their finances than to have them all flocking to hospital emergency rooms.

The fourth area in which we generate savings is by redirecting dollars that are now spent on the poor. In Oregon, we have more than 30 categories of coverage for poor people under Medicaid, so that poor people literally have to find a way to squeeze themselves into one box or another in order to find coverage--wildly inefficient and, frankly, pretty dehumanizing to those who participate.

The better way to go is to make coverage for low-income people automatic. Those who are of modest income would be eligible for a subsidy, but it would be for private coverage.

Finally, we secure savings through significant reform of the private insurance sector. Today, private insurance companies can cherry pick and take healthy people and send sick people to Government programs that are more fragile than they are. That would be barred under our legislation. There would be guaranteed issue. They could not discriminate against people with illnesses, so that in the insurance sector, under our bipartisan legislation, private insurance companies would compete on the basis of price, benefits, and quality, rather than who can find the healthiest people.

I see another colleague on the floor. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 60 seconds to wrap up. If my colleague will indulge me, I would appreciate it.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I talked with our colleague about health care, and I know he has an interest in a bipartisan effort. If the Senate begins with the children's health insurance program and we make it clear this is not some kind of Trojan horse for a Government-run health plan, but something that secures the needs for children, I think we can do this in a bipartisan way and then, in effect, segue into another bipartisan effort to fix health care that would get all Americans under the tent for quality affordable coverage.

Senator Bennett and I have brought before the Senate a proposal, particularly on the basis of the hearing in the Senate Budget Committee 2 weeks ago, that we think can bring the Senate together, go where no Congress has been able to go since 1945, when Harry Truman made an effort to do it, and that is a rational system so that all Americans have quality affordable coverage.

I yield the floor.

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