CHIP
Floor Speech
CHIP -- (Senate - September 26, 2007)
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, before he leaves the floor, let me congratulate Senator Grassley for his very fine work on this legislation, and Senator Hatch as well. It has been a true bipartisan effort. I want to take this discussion in a little different direction. I strongly support the SCHIP program. I happen to believe it is a disgrace that the United States of America remains the only country in the industrialized world which today does not guarantee health care to all of its people. I just came back the other day from a trip to Costa Rica, and this small, poor country manages to cover all of its people. Yet, in our country, we have 47 million Americans who have no health insurance, and we have some 9 million children who have no health insurance.
I always find it ironic that the American people seem to get from the White House what they don't want, and they don't get what they do want. The American people want to end the war in Iraq as soon as possible, a war which will soon be costing us, if you can believe it, $750 billion--three-quarters of $1 trillion--which even in Washington is a lot of money. For the war in Iraq, for Halliburton contracts, we seem to have an endless supply of money. The American people don't want it, but that is what they are getting.
On the other hand, the American people do want health insurance for their children. The American people strongly support--and the polls are very clear about this--the SCHIP program. The American people would like all of the children in this country to be covered. That is what they want, but that is what they are not getting.
What this bill, in fact, does do, which is very good--and I mentioned a moment ago my congratulations to Senator Grassley and Senator Hatch for their efforts--is it takes us somewhere. It provides health insurance for 5 million more children, which is clearly a significant step forward, and I will strongly support this legislation.
It is interesting to me that from the White House the main argument, it appears, for opposition to this particular piece of legislation, and the reason they are threatening to veto it, one of the key reasons is this is an expansion of ``government health care''--government health care. Let me read to my colleagues to whom it might be of interest, and to the American people, a poll on the economy done a few weeks ago by CBS News, from September 14 to September 16. This is the CBS poll.
Question No. 1: Which do you think would be better for the country: Having one health insurance program covering all Americans that would be administered by the government--administered by this terrible government--and paid for by taxpayers, or keeping the current system where many people get their insurance from private employers and some have no insurance? So CBS asked: Do you want a government-administered program covering all people or do you want the current system? The response from the American people was 55 percent believe in one health insurance for all Americans administered by the government; 29 percent want to maintain the current system.
We hear a lot of discussion from the White House about how terrible ``government health care'' is, and yet what the polls show by an almost 2-to-1 majority is that the American people would like a health insurance system guaranteeing health care to all people administered by the Government and paid for out of the tax base.
When I go back to Vermont, I find strong support for the Medicare Program, I find strong support for the Medicaid Program. Veterans want to see a significant increase in VA health care, which is, in fact, a 100-percent controlled Government program. In fact, Mr. Nicholson, who is head of the Veterans' Administration, former head of the Republican Party, says--and I think he is quite right--that the Veterans' Administration provides some of the very best quality health care in the United States of America, and they have been honored by national organizations who have looked at health care quality and have awarded distinction to the Veterans' Administration, which is, by the way, a 100-percent Government-run health care system. We have federally qualified health systems, health care programs all over America which time and time again are acknowledged to be tremendously successful. They are supported in a very strong, bipartisan way here in the Congress. They provide health care to millions of Americans--Government health care. So I think we should perhaps end this bogeyman mentality of Government health care--how terrible an idea it is. In fact, the American people want more Government health care in this country.
Our health care system has serious problems. In fact, it is in the midst of disintegrating. We have 47 million Americans today who have no health insurance, and that number, since President Bush has been in office, has gone up by over 7 million. The cost of health care is soaring. More and more people are not only uninsured, they are underinsured. Despite all of that, our country continues to spend twice as much per capita on health care as any other Nation on Earth. Meanwhile, despite all of that spending, despite all of the people who are uninsured, our health status measures--including infant mortality and life expectancy and the kind of work we do in disease prevention--ranks very low compared to other developed countries. We spend more, we get less value, we have more and more people uninsured, our health care system is disintegrating, and it is high time, in my view, that the United States ends the national disgrace of being the only country in the industrialized world that does not provide health care to all people.
Not only are more and more people uninsured; this system is even incapable of providing the doctors we need, especially in rural America. In cities we have doctors who are specialists earning millions of dollars a year, but somehow this system can't get doctors into rural America, into primary health care, into internal medicine. We lack dentists all over this country. We have a major nursing crisis, such that we are depleting the health care systems of the Philippines and other countries, because we are not educating our own nurses. So we have some major problems.
In terms of the SCHIP program, it is hard for me to understand--it is hard for me to begin to understand--how this President can be threatening to veto this legislation. We hear in the Congress a whole lot about family values. Well, if taking care of our children is not a family value, then I don't know what a family value is. It is clear also that providing health insurance to our children is what is cost effective. Forget the suffering involved. Forget the children who deal with illness they are not getting treated for because their parents don't have health insurance. Look at the cost-effective aspect of this. What kind of thinking is involved when we say: No, we can't provide health insurance for you, but when you get sick because you haven't gone to the doctor, oh, yes, we will operate on you and we will spend tens and tens of thousands of dollars to take care of you when you are in the hospital?
Let me conclude by saying that the time is long overdue for this country to get its priorities right. We should not continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a war the American people don't want. We should not, as the President and some in this institution want, give $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent by repealing the inheritance tax. One trillion dollars over 20 years, we have money to do that, but we don't have, apparently, $35 billion to provide health insurance to 4 million children in this country. This Congress has to reorder and change the priorities established in the White House, and I believe that passing this SCHIP program will be a good step forward, a first step forward to be followed by much more.
I yield the floor.
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