Health Care in America

Floor Speech

HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA -- (House of Representatives - June 03, 2009)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COURTNEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Again, like the others, I think this is an incredibly important moment right now not only this evening but this summer. The summer of 2009 I think will go down in history really as one of the great movements forward by our country really at the level of when we passed Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. And I, like you and the other speakers here, understand that; and getting this debate started and getting the facts out I think is the best way to make sure that we move forward and get this done.

I wanted to just share briefly an experience I had at the Congress on the Corner that I think is important because there clearly will be, as we go further into the summer, forces out there that are going to use misinformation and fear as a way of trying to stop the change that Mr. Klein described a few moments ago. At my Congress on the Corner, which was actually at a somewhat sort of off the beaten track or place, it was actually at a military PX, at the Navy base in Groton, Connecticut, where we set up our tables as active duty sailors, their families and retirees were going in to do their shopping. I had an experience which I just wanted to share with you, which was that many people, because of some urban myth that's out there, and whether it's talk radio or the Internet that is sort of propagating it, is spreading the claim that the Obama health care plan is going to take away TRICARE from our military and from retirees who are eligible for it. I just think it's important on this floor as clearly and as loudly to make the point that that is absolutely flatly untrue, that the veterans' health care system, the active duty health care system is going to be completely unaffected, as Mr. Klein said. It is an example of where the basic principles of this effort, which says that if you like the health care that you have right now, you can keep it. And that is clearly true for the people who wear the uniform of this country or who did and who now are eligible for VA benefits.

In fact, between the stimulus package and the budget that has been presented by the administration, what we are seeing is an unprecedented new investment in military health care and in veterans' health care. We have great new leadership at the VA in General Shinseki and Tammy Duckworth, who are totally committed to making sure that this system is improved and, in fact, expanded to keep the promise for people who served in our military. And the efforts that we are going to be talking about over the next 2 months completely leave that system intact in toto.

What is ironic, though, is that enemies of reform are using the argument that we are taking away a government-run system at the same time that they are attacking the reform effort as being too much government. Make up your mind. Either one doesn't work and we should get rid of it, or if it does work, well, maybe we should take some good ideas that exist in the military health care system and in the VA and apply them towards the populace at large. We know in terms of electronic medical records that probably the most highly developed and advanced system in American health care is military health care as far as electronic medical records. Doctors in Landstuhl hospital in Germany can track the charts of our soldiers who are recuperating at Walter Reed hospital or other military hospitals around the country. They can just pull it up in ways that in the civilian system don't exist today. Again, I would just argue that rather than using government as sort of an example of inefficiencies, the fact is that the military has shown that they can actually organize a sound, comprehensive system that provides high-quality care.

Lastly, I just wanted to, because, again, some of you have already spoken very powerfully and eloquently about the fact that we have an insurance system that has run amok. We come from the insurance capital of the world, Connecticut. Your family and my family have people who worked in the insurance industry. In the good old days, insurance was about pooling risk and sharing risk and using it as a mechanism to help cover people in terms of dealing with accident, disease and chronic illness. Obviously, it has gone off in a different direction. It is about avoiding risk in terms of the way insurance markets are set up. We are not about dismantling the system in toto. But what we are trying to do is reestablish it and go back to its roots in terms of creating health care systems that pool risk and share it and do it in a way that actually gets back to the basic principles of when the insurance was first started. The whaling industry in Connecticut created a situation where the whale ship owners realized they had to do something about losing ships. And that was the birth of insurance in Connecticut.

I will spare that history lesson and yield back. Again, my compliments for organizing this debate. And again, I do think this is a summer that historians will write about. And the discussion here is going to be an important part of it. So I yield back to Mr. Murphy.

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