Congressional Budget For The United States Government For Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, Chairman Conrad has emphasized how important it will be to tackle the major issues--health care reform and climate change--in a bipartisan way. I wish to spend a few minutes first expressing my support for that position and urging that the conference on the budget proceed expeditiously because then the heavy lifting in the Senate will begin.

For example, for American health care, what is needed is nothing short of a transformation of our system. American health care is simply broken. Medical costs are gobbling up everything in sight. Middle-class people know their paychecks are not going up, and the prime reason is because medical costs take away all of what would otherwise be a wage increase.

Our newspapers report daily that Americans are being laid off at their jobs. They lose their health benefits. What we see again and again is a spiral of tragedy, as they simply lurch from one effort to another to try to find health care and cannot get it.

For example, on Tuesday, the New York Times published a front page story titled, ``No Job and Soon No Benefits, Race to Help Son Stay Cancer Free.'' Dana Walker of Humble, Texas, was laid off from her job at DHL leaving her and her family without health insurance. Her son Jake is just 21 years old and is a cancer survivor. Now uninsured, the Walkers have had to defer their own care, pay up front for Jake's care, and have essentially been refused care at the hospital that specializes in care. In the article, Mrs. Walker said, ``Your job as a parent is to protect your children at any cost. I really feel like I had let him down.''

I don't believe Mrs. Walker has let her son down. She's doing all she can. In the individual market health insurers can discriminate on the basis of age, gender, family size, geography, health status and pre-existing conditions like cancer. Even though Jake has been cancer free for a year, he can't find affordable health insurance on his own. Insurance companies can pick and choose the customers who are the good risks and leave the bad risks, like Jake Walker, out in the cold. It isn't Mrs. Walker who's let her son down. It's the health care system.

This is not going to be fixed by a piecemeal approach to health care reform that tackles one part of the system or another and produces incremental change for perhaps a short period of time. What is needed is transformational change. I believe Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are committed to that objective.

I think there is a growing recognition that both parties have had a valid point. Democrats, in my view, are correct that you cannot fix health care unless you cover everybody because without full coverage you cannot organize the market. There is too much cost-shifting. There is no emphasis on prevention. You have to get all Americans good quality, affordable care. Republicans have valid points, in my view, as well. You should not just turn everything over to the Government and say that is the answer.

What is really needed for transformational change is containing the costs. The Congressional Budget Office, last May, said that for the amount of money America is spending today on health care, all Americans in a couple years could have good quality, affordable coverage like their Members of Congress. That is what the Congressional Budget Office said when it looked at one approach to dealing with health costs.

I am very confident, under the leadership of Chairman Baucus and Chairman Kennedy, that they will have a lot of support for transformational change so we make sure all Americans have access to good quality, affordable choices, and they get rewarded when they take sensible steps, for example, in preventive health care and wellness and shop carefully for health care coverage.

Today, if you are lucky enough to have health care coverage, you do not get any choice at most employers. That is not the way it is for Members of Congress. So why don't we agree, Democrats and Republicans, after we get this budget conference put together, that we are going to make sure all Americans get good quality, affordable choices like Members of Congress have? Then let's start rewarding them. Let's reward them for sensible prevention. For example, the Safeway Corporation has been doing that for some time. I would like to say that seniors who lower their blood pressure and lower their cholesterol would get reduced Part B premiums. That is the outpatient portion of the Medicare program. But these are areas where Democrats and Republicans can come together.

There has been considerable discussion on the Senate floor about the idea of reconciliation for tackling health care. I think Chairman Conrad is absolutely right in his approach.

I will say there have been many of us on both the Democratic and Republican side, as we have looked to health care, who want to make the issue of reconciliation irrelevant. We want to make the issue of reconciliation irrelevant because we are hoping to bring enough Democrats and Republicans together so we will have 70 or more Senators gathered to fix the health care system.

These issues, ultimately, in my view, are not ones that automatically produce a partisan divide. The private insurance system is also broken. It is about cherry-picking.

Madam President, how much time do I have remaining?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Five minutes 31 seconds.

Mr. WYDEN. For the remainder of my time, Madam President, let me tick off a number of other areas where Democrats and Republicans on this health care issue can come together for transformative change.

Today's private insurance model is also broken. It is all about cherry-picking. It is about taking healthy people and sending sick people over to Government programs more fragile than they are. So what Democrats and Republicans want to do--again, in the name of transformative change--is we want to say that the companies are going to have to take all comers. We understand that is a key part of health care reform.

But we are going to put them all on equal footing. There are not going to be any price controls or big Federal regulatory systems. But everybody is going to be part of a big group so we contain costs as part of a big pool. We will reward prevention and wellness, which, of course, is not done today. This is where I think it will be possible for firms in the health care area to both do good and do well by offering better service to our people.

Other areas of transformative health care reform: The issue of portability and making sure our people can take their health care coverage with them so they do not lose their coverage when they lose their job or they wish to leave their job. That is what happens today. Of course, much of the health care system does not offer that kind of portability because it is built around what happened in the 1940s, when somebody started working and stayed put for 25 years, until you gave them a gold watch. Well, today the typical worker changes their job 11 times by the time they are 40. We need portable coverage. Democrats and Republicans can work together on that.

I want to close, again in the name of bipartisanship, by talking about how we can help people who have coverage. They have been described by some as the contentedly covered Americans. I think what we ought to say for those folks, Democrats and Republicans, is, let's let them keep the coverage they have. Let's make sure they are wealthier in the new system because they get rewarded when they engage in those preventive practices or make a good purchase. Let's make sure they are healthier in the new system. Chairman Conrad is here and has talked about improvements, for example, in chronic care, which is certainly part of making Americans healthier.

Finally, let's make sure that if they leave their job or their job leaves them, as I have touched on, they are going to have a safety net of affordable coverage.

Each and every one of those points I have talked about is an issue on which Democrats and Republicans can come together. I hope the Senate will follow Chairman Conrad's advice about proceeding expeditiously. I think there are many Members of the Senate who want to tackle these big issues--climate change and health care--in a manner that makes reconciliation irrelevant because we have brought together the kind of broad majorities that I think are particularly within the grasp of the Senate on this issue of reforming health care. I look forward to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle for exactly that kind of transformative policy to better meet the needs of the American people.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

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