Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007
CHILDREN'S HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - October 25, 2007)
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Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend for yielding.
This is a good day. This is a good day because we have another opportunity to extend to children, 4 million of whom are not covered by health insurance, coverage.
I don't know how many families that is, but it's obviously millions of families who will have the confidence that if their child gets sick, they will have insurance. They can access health care. They can try to make their children well.
I want to refer briefly to my friend Mr. Boehner's comments because I agree with him that the American public expected us to come here and work together. But let us review this legislative process.
First of all, we had committee hearings. I want to tell my friend from Texas, those committee hearings were difficult. We didn't really get to the committee hearings and committee markups that we wanted to have. I think that's unfortunate. That was not our fault, I suggest to you.
Secondly, let me say that we passed a major bill through this House, approximately $90 billion. It dealt with a number of subjects, including doctor reimbursements so that they would continue to serve those who are poor under Medicaid and, indeed, under Medicare, so the reimbursement levels under Medicare would be appropriate.
We dealt with rural hospitals so that they would be reimbursed at levels that allowed them to continue to serve our rural communities. We dealt with some other issues. And, yes, we dealt with children's health insurance.
That bill went to the Senate. And there were a lot of Members of your party who didn't like the expansive bill. But before it got there, you offered a motion to recommit on our bill. You cut our spending cuts, you did not agree with those, but you adopted the revenues from the tax increase in cigarettes in your motion to recommit. Most of you, perhaps not all, but most of you voted for that motion to recommit. So this funding source is one that we have agreed to and everybody has voted for.
When it got to the Senate, we made a tremendous compromise. And we went from a $90 billion bill covering rural hospitals and doctors' reimbursement and poor people who would have been marginalized, perhaps, by the cuts to Medicare Advantage. And we made a compromise, mainly with Republicans in the Senate who felt that they wanted a more restricted bill. So that bill that is confronting us now is now a $35 billion bill, a very substantial compromise, I will suggest to you.
That bill then passed the Senate, went to the President, he vetoed it, it came back here, and you made a determination, some of you, not to vote to override the President's veto. So those 4 million children don't yet have a health insurance bill.
Then 38 of you wrote to the Speaker and said that you wanted to see certain changes. We addressed that. We addressed it very substantively, we addressed it very carefully, and we addressed it in a bipartisan way. And because this bill has to go through the Senate, we then engaged Senator Hatch and Senator Grassley so that it would not be simply Democrats saying, well, we'll take this and not that. And it was a very considered judgment applied, and almost all of the points raised in that letter were addressed.
Now, I had the opportunity this morning to meet with, not all 38, but the majority of those 38. Obviously they were correct that there was not more time to discuss this. I think that was a fair analysis. But the fact of the matter is that careful attention and compromise was taken.
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